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Meeting 2026-05-01 0958 AEST

UN CEFACT GTR - AEST / PST​

Apr 30, 2026

Attendees​

  • Ann
  • Darrell
  • Jo
  • John
  • Sankarshan

Summary​

Meeting discussions addressed project public review processes and digital identity anchor definitions and various pilot initiatives.

Public Review and DIA
The project hopes to shortly enter a 60-day public review window. The team simplified the Digital Identity Anchor definition to clarify that it wraps existing identifiers.

Pilot Progress and Debates
Global pilot projects continue with test data to minimize risk. Experts debated the utility of Selective Disclosure JSON Web Tokens within supply chain transparency models.

Conformity Vocabulary Challenges
The team acknowledged the complexity of standardizing international conformity vocabularies. Developing granular criteria for global comparison remains an ongoing effort.

Decisions​

ALIGNED​

  • Digital identity anchor definition updated The project group agrees to remove the phrase 'trust wrapper' from the definition of digital identity anchor to maintain conciseness while retaining the core meaning.

  • TRQP and LinkedVP The group agreed that these issues will continue to be discussed but aren’t a blocker for public review.

Details​

  • Project Overview and Public Review Process: John Phillips welcomed attendees and noted the project is approaching a public review status, which involves a 60-day window for receiving comments from anyone wishing to contribute (00:00:01). After this 60-day period, the UN/CEFACT bureau will determine the project deliverables and next phases, which includes ongoing pilot projects being worked on in parallel. The team recently merged an updated, simplified definition of the digital identity anchor (00:00:57).

  • Definition of Digital Identity Anchor (DIA): The definition of the digital identity anchor is critical to the Global Trust Registry (GTR) project, which focuses on registrars and what they issue to clients, recognized as digital identity anchors (00:02:00). The team has simplified the DIA to consist only of the identifier the registrar issues and the Decentralized Identifier (DID) supplied by the applicant. A key intention is ensuring the definition states clearly that the DIA is not a new identifier but rather wraps up existing identifiers (00:04:29).

  • Outstanding Issues with the DIA Definition: A discussion is ongoing regarding the exact wording of the DIA definition, specifically focusing on the phrase "functions as a trust wrapper," which Jo Spencer pointed out might necessitate defining what a "trust wrapper" is (00:04:29). John Phillips noted that removing these words might simplify the definition without losing its core meaning, and Jo Spencer suggested that the DIA merely provides "more trust" to the recognized identifier. The team wants the definition to be as concise as possible while retaining the core intent that the DIA is not a new identifier (00:05:34) (00:07:48).

  • Discussion on Trust Registry Query Protocol (TRQP) and Verifiable Presentations: The team discussed the outstanding issues regarding the Trust Registry Query Protocol (TRQP) and linked verifiable presentations, which John Phillips suggested deferring as live discussion topics rather than including them in the current version destined for public review (00:08:26). Darrell O'Donnell mentioned that new work on TRQP, captured in a "mega ticket" by Sankarshan, explores what was intentionally excluded from the core TRQP but remains necessary for broader linkages, such as connecting to the UNCFAC global registry (00:09:22). Sankarshan was asked to provide a link to the relevant ticket to facilitate further discussion (00:10:19).

  • Update on Pilot Projects with Registrars: John Phillips provided an update on the pilot projects, noting that the Spanish co-lead's team is preparing to launch their end of a pilot with Registrador (00:11:25). The pilot participation is designed to be simple and low-cost, using synthetic or test data to minimize risk to operational systems, although necessary approval processes may prolong the timeline (00:12:20). The goal is to have several working pilots completed before the plenary in November, involving an end-to-end case of a Spanish company receiving a DIA from Registrador, which is then verified by a UN member border control (00:13:22).

  • Additional Pilot and Project Initiatives: Interest in the pilot projects has been expressed by Canada and India, aiming for an ecosystem of four registrars and their companies (00:14:27). Other ongoing projects include an initiative with the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) in Australia to apply the UNTP to conformity assessment processes for accredited test labs and other certified bodies (00:15:46). A potentially significant initiative is the collaboration with the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA), where very large member companies are expected to announce that their suppliers will adopt the UNTP process (00:16:54).

  • Debate on Selective Disclosure JSON Web Token (SD-JWT) in UNTP: John Phillips highlighted an ongoing debate initiated by Steve Capell concerning the utility of Selective Disclosure JSON Web Token (SD-JWT) technology within the UNTP context, specifically whether it offers any necessary use cases (00:17:56). The UNTP specification is unique because it moves away from the traditional issuer-holder-verifier model, instead issuing verifiable credentials that are made accessible in a trustworthy storage space via JSON-LD structures for traversing the graph upstream (00:19:49). The debate touches on issues of commercial sensitivity within supply chains, where entities might not want to disclose their upstream suppliers, making selective disclosure a pertinent topic (00:22:47).

  • Transparency, Trust, and Regulation in Supply Chains: The conversation expanded into the tension between transparency and trust, with Darrell O'Donnell citing Rachel Botsman's perspective that transparency is often sought due to a lack of trust, which can ironically lead to less trust (00:26:34). Regulations like the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and requirements for scope 3 emissions necessitate a drive toward transparency in supply chains, making certain information sharing potentially inevitable despite commercial risks (00:24:40) (00:29:18). Sankarshan raised a question as to whether the regulatory requirements are fully defined to determine the suitability of technologies like Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) or SD-JWT (00:26:34).

  • Challenge of Conformity Vocabularies (CVC): John Phillips introduced the complex and ongoing discussion within UNTP regarding conformity vocabularies (CVCs), which aim to define a data schema for conformity measurements (00:33:09). The challenge is creating an internationally standardized unit of measure on topics and criteria for conformity that gets down to the specific, granular criteria necessary for global comparison (00:34:10). The UNTP specification currently includes an idea for a conformity vocabulary, but the complexity of defining all criteria will likely take time to settle (00:35:00).

Chat​

00:12:04.498,00:12:07.498
sankarshan: [[Enhancements] Proposal: Strengthening TRQP Readiness for Production-Scale Ecosystem Adoption · Issue #175 · trustoverip/tswg-trust-registry-protocol · GitHub](https://github.com/trustoverip/tswg-trust-registry-protocol/issues/175) (the single big issue)

00:19:28.254,00:19:31.254
sankarshan: [Is there a use-case for SD-JWT? (#655) · Issues · United Nations / UNECE / UNCEFACT / United Nations Transparency Protocol - UNTP · GitLab](https://opensource.unicc.org/un/unece/uncefact/spec-untp/-/issues/655)