Source of Truth
Definition
The answer an organisation has agreed to use for a given piece of information. It may be supplied directly by the system designated as authoritative, or it may be a reconciled value assembled from several systems. The term describes the agreed answer, not the mechanism that produces it.
Expanded Explanation
The phrase is used loosely across the industry, which is why the tieback Knowledge Base separates it from two adjacent terms. A system of record is a designated place. An authoritative source is a competent, accountable origin for a value. A source of truth is the resulting answer that downstream processes and publications are required to use.
In simple cases the three coincide. If one system is designated authoritative for a product weight and nothing else competes with it, that system is also the source of truth for weight. In more common cases they diverge: three systems hold a material composition, one is authoritative for the engineering value, another carries the supplier declaration, and the agreed answer is a reconciled golden record built from both under defined rules.
The related phrase “single source of truth” describes an aspiration rather than an architecture: one agreed answer per attribute, consistently used everywhere. It should not be read as a requirement to hold all product information in one physical system. Federated architectures achieve a single source of truth by agreeing where each answer comes from, not by centralising storage.
Why It Matters
A Digital Product Passport publishes one value per field. Deciding that value is a governance question before it is a technical one. Organisations that leave it undecided discover the decision has been made implicitly by integration order, and that two published passports for related products can disagree with each other while both are technically working as built.
Common Misconceptions
It means a single agreed answer. Most manufacturers reach that state across several systems by designating authority per attribute and reconciling deliberately.
A system of record is where authority sits. A source of truth is the answer that results. They differ whenever more than one system holds the same attribute.
Related Terms
Related Knowledge Base Articles
- What is a System of Record?
- What is a Golden Record?
- How Enterprise Systems Support Digital Product Passports
Related Articles
- Authoritative Source
- Product Data Governance
- Product Data Stewardship
- System of Record
- Golden Record
- Product Data Quality
- Data Architecture
- Master Data Management
See Also
References
- Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, Official Journal of the European Union: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1781/oj
- ISO 8000, data quality: https://www.iso.org/standard/81745.html
About This Article
tieback Knowledge is a continuously maintained reference library covering Digital Product Passports, product traceability, product compliance and related regulations. Articles are reviewed regularly as legislation, standards and implementation guidance evolve.