In accordance with the NATO Interoperability Policy, standards are to support interoperability between NATO, the Nations and their respective Communities of Interest to act together coherently, effectively and efficiently to achieve allied tactical, operational and strategic objectives, especially to support the achievement of Information Superiority within an information sharing, networked environment. A primary goal of this standard is to ensure consistency in the way that Metadata is bound to information throughout its lifecycle and across different enterprises. This is a necessary step to enabling trust between information sharing partners in a data- centric environment. The objective of this document is to provide a generally applicable, formal and consistent way to describe and categorise Binding Mechanisms of various types and strengths. The primary audiences for this standard are the capability development and information assurance communities.