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2025-07-11 0957 AEST

Jul 11, 2025

UN CEFACT GTR - AEST / PST​

Invited Jo Spencer Steve Capell Alina Nica Gales

Attachments UN CEFACT GTR - AEST / PST

Meeting records Transcript Recording

Summary​

John Phillips opened the UNCEFACT Global Trust Registry Project meeting, emphasizing its goal to establish open standards for global trust registries focusing on supply chain elements and identifying authoritative national data sources for businesses. The project will consider a new name, "Authoritative Registry Directory" (CARD), and develop a logical model for recognizing authoritative registrars within a legal framework. Alina provided an update on Recommendation 49 and is developing eligibility requirements for registries focusing on legal basis, governance, and metadata, while Lucy Yang stressed the importance of stakeholder alignment on principles.

Details​

  • Project Overview and Goals John Phillips opened the UNCEFACT Global Trust Registry Project meeting, the second in a series, highlighting the project's aim to create open standards and recommendations for global trust registries without undermining existing initiatives (00:00:00) (00:02:50). The project will initially focus on concrete supply chain elements like organizations, land, and assets, rather than personal identities (00:03:53). The project's goal is to identify authoritative sources of information in each country for supply chain-relevant entities, providing contact details and access points for businesses to verify suppliers (00:37:38).

  • Project Name and Legal Basis The project is considering changing its name from "Global Trust Registry" to something like "Authoritative Registry Directory" (CARD) to avoid confusion. John Phillips emphasized the importance of a legal jurisdictional basis for the registries they are interested in, focusing on sovereign nation-states and their established legal frameworks (00:05:01). Alina, a Spanish registrar and lawyer, provides valuable insight into how registries and legal frameworks operate (00:03:53).

  • Logical Model of the Project John Phillips presented a logical model illustrating how the project envisions a registry of authoritative registrars (00:07:03). This would allow relying parties to verify if a supplier is registered and if their registry is indeed the authoritative source for that jurisdiction (00:07:59). This builds on the idea of existing trade frameworks across different jurisdictions, where each participant is registered with an authoritative registry (00:07:03).

  • Two Main Streams of Work The project has two broad areas of work: establishing a governance framework for recognizing registries within UNCEFACT and developing recommendations for universally accessible, verifiable, and trustworthy data. A key challenge is integrating diverse existing registry types and their current work into a cohesive system, potentially through a "digital identity anchor". John Phillips also mentioned the universal concept of a digital product passport, which requires verifiable claims about products and their suppliers (00:09:01).

  • Handling Complex Registry Landscapes The meeting addressed questions about managing complex registry landscapes within jurisdictions, such as multiple business registries in Europe or Australia (00:10:22). John Phillips clarified that the project will not fix individual countries' internal complexities but will recognize what exists and recommend ways to simplify it, acknowledging that UNCEFACT can only make recommendations, not enforce changes. Systems like GLEIF and LEIs and vLEIs, which recognize local registration processes, could be integrated into the UNCEFACT directory if countries endorse them (00:11:37).

  • Recommendation 49 and UNTP Alina provided an update on Recommendation 49, which has been approved with some changes, notably the removal of a detailed annex describing the United Nations Transparency Protocol (UNTP) from the final version. Although explicit references to UNTP may be removed from the body, the underlying idea of UNTP is still supported by the recommendation (00:12:52). John Phillips noted that the updated version of Recommendation 49 without the annex should be available in a couple of weeks (00:13:56).

  • Project Deliverables and Data Requirements John Phillips outlined the project's deliverables, including eligibility requirements for registries, being developed by Alina (00:14:54). These requirements will focus on foundational elements like a legal basis for the registry, a clear governance process, and the types of data (metadata) the registry records (00:15:45). The project is not creating a shadow directory of actual registered content but rather pointing to authoritative sources (00:17:42).

  • Accommodating Diverse Data Structures The project aims to accommodate different existing data structures rather than compelling registries to change them (00:18:53). This involves exploring universal resolver approaches and existing open wrapper identity structures like RFC on GLU (00:17:42). Additionally, two pilots are planned to test and prove the recommended ideas (00:18:53).

  • Property Registry and Stakeholder Engagement The project also considers the inclusion of property registry data in the digital identity anchor, defining "property" broadly to include both ownership (like trademarks) and physical locations (like licensed facilities) (00:22:06). Lucy Yang emphasized the importance of stakeholder alignment on principles before presenting detailed requirements, especially given that many businesses are not yet issuing credentials or thinking about trust registries (00:30:22) (00:45:21). John Phillips agreed to consider creating a separate principles document to address this concern, highlighting that some initial text is already coming from stakeholders like the Spanish registrar (00:46:07).

  • Continuous Awareness and Collaboration John Phillips stressed the importance of continuous awareness of ongoing initiatives to avoid unintentionally challenging existing efforts (00:24:27). Lucy Yang shared her observations from GDC, noting the value of bringing together different sectors and use cases leveraging similar trust infrastructures and standards (00:26:28). She also highlighted the recurring pattern that businesses prioritize issuance platforms before investing in trust registries, suggesting a need to adapt engagement strategies (00:27:40) (00:31:23). Marcos Allende and Lucy Yang offered to contribute their expertise, particularly regarding existing standards like ETSI and its upcoming updates to support eIDAS 2.0 (00:39:29) (00:41:31).

Suggested next steps​

  • John Phillips will create a separate principles document and positioning document for the project.

  • Lucy Yang will keep the group updated on ETSI's work to update the trust list and data model for eIDAS 2.0, including international profile extensions.