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2026-01-22 1852 AEDT

Jan 22, 2026

UN CEFACT GTR Project - AUS / EU​

Invited Alina Nica Gales John Phillips Jo Spencer Steve Capell

Attachments UN CEFACT GTR Project - AUS / EU

Meeting records Transcript Recording

Summary​

John Phillips led the UN/CEFACT global trust registry project meeting, noting the recording for a public transcript and the project's adherence to UN/CEFACT's open development process and UN intellectual property rules. John Phillips confirmed that the UN/CEFACT plenary date shifted to November and proposed focusing on producing robust project documents by the end of March to justify the next step, a strategy supported by Jo Spencer and Sankarshan. Discussions addressed technical issues, including a merge request from Steve Capell to expand the grid schema and concerns from John Phillips and Harmon van der Kooij about scope creep, emphasizing a focus on authoritative registrars of UN member states and business registries, a sentiment Hans agreed with. Harmon van der Kooij suggested keeping the Digital Identity Anchor "super lean and mean" with only the identifier issued by the original registry, while John Phillips argued for a flexible container, and Alex Tweeddale advised using "UN member state" or "member state" instead of "nation state," which John Phillips agreed to implement on the website after Brett Highland provided broad feedback for improvement.

Details​

  • Meeting Purpose and Access to Information John Phillips welcomed participants to the UN/CEFACT global trust registry project meeting, noting its timing for European and Australian participants and that it was being recorded for a public transcript. They stated that the project work follows UN/CEFACT's open development process and UN intellectual property rules, meaning the work becomes public and royalty-free. The focus of the meeting would pivot toward addressing issues and merge requests on the project's GitLab website for a consolidated view of the work [00:00:00].

  • Project Lead and Previous Discussions John Phillips noted that their co-lead, Alina, could not join the meeting due to a migraine [00:01:13]. They reviewed key takeaways from the meeting two weeks prior, including Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs' interest in a pilot and ongoing work related to European identity, with Alina being contacted by the finance minister from Germany about the project. The team aims to ensure alignment with projects like the European identity system and the European business wallet [00:02:06].

  • GitLab Issues and Member Participation John Phillips encouraged participants, including Alex Tweeddale, to actively raise issues and correspondence on the public GitLab repository to ensure the project appears collaborative [00:04:01]. They also mentioned having transitioned suggestions from emails into GitLab issues, citing one from Brett Highland regarding a review of the website [00:01:13]. The discussion on the issues would proceed in the order presented on GitLab [00:04:01].

  • Project Timeline and Plenary Dates A discussion took place regarding project dates and deliverables, with John Phillips clarifying that the UN/CEFACT plenary date had shifted from May to November [00:04:56] [00:07:29]. John Phillips explained that producing a recommendation requires everything to be finalized at least 100 days before the plenary [00:06:11]. Hans asked for clarification on whether the plenary date was postponed or a new date was set, to which John Phillips confirmed that the May date is now a forum, and the formal plenary is in November [00:07:29].

  • Document Production Strategy and Goals John Phillips proposed that the project should ignore the formal recommendation timeline and instead focus on producing robust documents to justify the next step, which they envision as the UN or UN/CEFACT spinning up a project to create the grid [00:09:34]. They suggested aiming to have a robust set of documents ready for general release by the end of March, without delaying until November [00:13:10]. Jo Spencer agreed that the documents would continue to evolve, and Sankarshan felt the plan was manageable [00:15:02].

  • Pilot Projects and Success Metrics John Phillips explained that the first step of action for authoritative national identifiers could be participation in pilots for the grid [00:10:38]. They outlined success as having substantive and detailed documents ready and active pilots working on implementation, noting that success would likely build momentum rather than a sudden, grandiose approval [00:12:08]. Jo Spencer inquired about activity planned for the May forum, and John Phillips confirmed they would look to present the work there [00:14:04].

  • Scope Discussion: Technical Expansion and Manuka Honey Example The discussion shifted to a technical issue raised by Steve Capell concerning Manuka honey and internationally recognized memberships for products, which exemplified the complexities of supply chain queries [00:17:00]. John Phillips was concerned about curating a vast number of registries but was open to the idea that the grid's pattern could be reused by others, even if they are not included in the UN GRID [00:19:05] [00:23:04]. Jo Spencer added other examples like champagne and feta, assuming the work would focus on electronic verification of existing information [00:20:11].

  • Proposed Schema Changes for the Grid John Phillips presented a merge request from Steve Capell that proposes adding detail to the grid schema by expanding the "technical endpoint" row into "register ID," "registered ID pattern," "query endpoint," and "resolver endpoint" [00:21:01]. John Phillips welcomed review of this merge request but confirmed that the grid's focus would remain on authoritative registrars of UN member states. They stated they would not close or accept the request until after the next meeting [00:22:06] [00:24:11].

  • Reusability of the Pattern and Scope Creep Concerns Alex Tweeddale suggested looking at existing schema frameworks, like the Open Agentic Schema Framework, to ensure the grid's schema is a standardized, reusable framework applicable to other business-level implementations [00:25:07]. John Phillips agreed with the need for a reusable pattern but emphasized limiting the project's current scope to authoritative registrars and avoiding "scope creep". Hans expressed concern about the discussion potentially leading to support for a "mass balance approach," which John Phillips clarified is not the project's intent; their contribution is limited to verifying the registration of organizations by authoritative registrars [00:27:15] [00:29:20].

  • Focus on Business Registries Harmon van der Kooij and John Phillips discussed the risk of scope creep, with Harmon van der Kooij advocating for focusing primarily on business registers to maximize value, despite Alina's expertise in land registries. Hans agreed that focusing on business registries is complex enough [00:29:20] [00:31:46]. John Phillips reassured the group that the specific merge request from Steve Capell only clarified the technical endpoint and did not expand the scope to cover things like Manuka Honey [00:32:39].

  • Review of Website Content John Phillips presented an issue raised by Brett Highland, a well-respected figure from NATA, who provided broad feedback and suggestions for improving and simplifying the website content [00:34:42]. John Phillips accepted the general need for improvement and agreed to remove potentially unclear terms like "paper on glass" [00:35:41]. They encouraged others to contribute to this review [00:36:37].

  • Digital Identity Anchor Specification Discussion The discussion moved to the project's second major area: providing feedback to the UNP specification on modifying the Digital Identity Anchor (DIA) [00:36:37]. Harmon van der Kooij argued for keeping the DIA "super lean and mean," suggesting it should contain only the identifier issued by the original registry, such as a KVK number [00:38:41]. Harmon van der Kooij felt that multiple identifiers should be mapped with the Decentralized Identifier (DID) of a company, but that the DIA should strictly be the clear identifier issued by an official register [00:40:09].

  • Flexibility of the DIA Container John Phillips suggested that the registrars should have the choice to issue multiple identifiers in a bundle, and that an argument could be made for a simplification if they were all issued in one DIA [00:42:48]. They also highlighted that the DIA contains at least two types of data: data the registrar is responsible for (like the KVK number) and data they receive and check but are not responsible for (like the DID) [00:44:07]. John Phillips concluded that they prefer a flexible container but would recommend using it in a constrained way [00:46:00].

  • Consistent Terminology John Phillips introduced an issue about the use of "nation state," suggesting that the term may have a particular, potentially ambiguous meaning [00:47:54]. Alex Tweeddale confirmed that the preferred terminology in UN circles is "UN member state" or "member state," and not "nation state" [00:48:46]. John Phillips agreed to perform a general search and replace across the website to adopt the more appropriate term [00:48:46].

Suggested next steps​

  • John Phillips will wait until after tomorrow's meeting before closing or accepting the merge request from Steve Capel regarding the grid schema.

  • John Phillips will work through Brett Highland's suggestions for website improvements, simplifying content and replacing the term "paper on glass" with something easier to understand.

  • John Phillips will perform a general search and replace across the website to replace the term "nation state" with "UN member state" or remove the term if it is superfluous.

  • Alex Tweeddale and the group will look through existing schema frameworks to pick up common language and ways of laying out things to make the pattern more reusable for other situations.

  • The group will provide sufficiently robust and well-considered documents that justify the next step of spinning up a project that creates the grid.

Chat​

00:04:14 John Phillips: https://opensource.unicc.org/un/unece/uncefact/gtr/-/issues

00:18:53 sankarshan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81nuka_honey ?

00:19:58 sankarshan: According to research by the Unique Mānuka Factor Honey Association (UMFHA), the main trade association of New Zealand mānuka honey producers (New Zealand being the main producer of mānuka honey in the world), while only 1,700 tonnes (3.7 million pounds) of mānuka honey are produced in New Zealand every year, six times as much are marketed internationally as mānuka honey, of which 1,800 tonnes (4.0 million pounds) are in the UK alone. https://web.archive.org/web/20130915094346/http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/food-fraud-buzz-over-fake-manuka-honey/story-fnb64oi6-1226704038619

00:22:31 sankarshan: https://opensource.unicc.org/un/unece/uncefact/gtr/-/issues/7

00:22:35 sankarshan: for reference

00:25:42 Alex Tweeddale: https://github.com/agntcy/oasf

00:36:00 sankarshan: https://opensource.unicc.org/un/unece/uncefact/gtr/-/issues/6 : website review