Introduction to the Project
The UN/CEFACT Global Trust Registry Project (“GTR project”) will recommend the governance and technical foundation for a digital directory, publicly accessible and hosted by the United Nations, that would list authoritative registrars of the UN Member States and the registers that they maintain. The purpose of the UN Global Registrar Information Directory (GRID) is to facilitate digital trust, verification, and interoperability in the global supply chain and public administration systems.
This will enable organisations to verify whether a credential (e.g., a commercial registration number, a property title, a trademark ownership certificate) has been issued by a valid and recognized authoritative register. It will also mitigate risks of impersonation, forgery, or unverifiable claims that may arise from fragmented or opaque national systems.
To facilitate verification, the GRID will also record if Registrars issue digital credentials or otherwise enable online verification of their register contents and who they have been issued to.
The GRID will provide a trustworthy map to the world's supply chain Registrar and a guide to how and what they register.
The GRID is the first objective of the project
In addition, the project will recommend how Registrars can use the UNTP "Digital Identity Anchor" (DIA) specification to issue verifiable identifiers for supply chain relevant claims and how these can further support global supply chain transparency and verification. This will include recommendations on the use of the DIA specification, as well as recommendations on the specification itself for the UNTP team
The DIA recommendations form the second objective of the project
Achieving the first objective will demand defining a framework for identifying, listing, and verifying authoritative public legal registers that issue or certify identifiers related to rights, ownership, legal personality, or public status under national or international law. With a focus on supply chains and trade, these may include: commercial and corporate registers, land and real property registers, registries of movable assets and secured transactions, civil status and population registers, intellectual property and trademark registries, and other official registers that are managed or supervised by a public authority and produce legal effects, as well as any additional public registers that meet the eligibility criteria set forth in this document to qualify as authoritative registers.
The framework needs to confirm institutional legitimacy, legal reliability, and operational integrity of listed registers, in alignment with internationally recognized principles of registration and legal publicity. Identifying minimum requirements for legal authority, governance, and verifiability will promote legal certainty and cross-border digital trust.
Further, and in order for the GRID to remain relevant and useful, it needs to be both built well and be sustainable. This means that the project will propose an outline operating model that shows how the GRID could be self-sustaining based on a participatory model (such as that adopted by ICAO's PKD). Two key principles of the GRID model are that Registrars should be empowered (and incentivised) to maintain their own data in the GRID, and that the GRID itself should be run as efficiently as possible.
There are a number of architectural options available for the GRID to provide its services, in broad terms these range from centralised architectures (where the GRID is the focal point for proof of recognition) to decentralised arhcitectures (where the GRID issues recognition to Registrars). These offer different benefits profiles and these will need to be considered when blueprints for the GRID are approved.
Achieving the second objective will require project to provide recommendations on the issuance and validation of verifiable credentials by authoritative sources with the aim of fostering confidence in digital public services and international business. This will require the project to align with recognized interoperability standards and promote semantic consistency through structured data models, enabling smooth integration across legal, administrative, and digital ecosystems.
The GTR project supports implementation of the UN Global Digital Compact and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly through the promotion of digital trust infrastructure, legal identity for all (SDG 16.9), resilient legal frameworks (SDG 9.1), and transparent governance (SDG 16.5 and SDG 12.6).