Skip to main content

2025-09-18 1656 AEST

Sep 18, 2025

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 welcomed participants to the UN/CEFACT global trust registry project meeting, outlining the agenda and intellectual property guidelines. Harmen van der Kooij introduced themselves as a new participant from FIDES Labs, while Alina Nica Gales shared insights from the WTO forum on digital trust and emphasized the need for authoritative public registers. The discussion focused on defining minimum requirements for authoritative registers, ensuring inclusivity for countries at varying digital maturity levels, and providing updates on pilot progress with Spain, India, South America, and the Netherlands. John Phillips introduced a "pre-parade" concept for governance and operations, presenting case studies of the ICAO PKD and UN/CEFACT LOCODE systems. Alina Nica Gales proposed a hybrid governance system for the Global Trust Registry (GTR) with UN anchoring, outlining key governance questions and the progress of a draft governance document.

Details​

  • Meeting Introduction and UN/CEFACT Project Overview John Phillips welcomed everyone to the UN/CEFACT global trust registry project meeting, emphasizing the importance of recording the session for transcription and minutes. They also outlined the code of conduct, which promotes respectful interaction, and clarified that all work for UN/CEFACT falls under open-source or royalty-free intellectual property rights, ensuring no trade secrets are claimed (00:00:00). The agenda for the meeting included introductions for new attendees, a recap of the previous meeting, and a significant discussion on the functionality, governance, and operations of an authoritative registrar directory (00:01:04).

  • New Attendee Introduction Harmen van der Kooij introduced themself as a new participant from FIDES Labs in the Netherlands, explaining that their team facilitates experiments related to wallets for persons, organizations, and things. They expressed their interest in the UNP and mentioned a potential pilot suggestion for the working group (00:01:56).

  • Insights from WTO Forum Alina Nica Gales shared insights from their attendance at the DWTO forum in Geneva, highlighting sessions on digital resilience for small economies, managing ESG risks in global value chains, and transforming small businesses through digitalization (00:01:56). They discussed a key concern from the forum regarding the lack of trust in digital value chains, particularly when titles and business registers are still paper-based. Alina Nica Gales emphasized that trust in digital systems ultimately stems from public authorities, such as business registers, who issue credentials and identifiers (00:03:22).

  • Minimum Requirements for Authoritative Registers Alina Nica Gales explained that the project is working on defining a minimum set of requirements for an authoritative register to be considered as such, primarily emphasizing the need for it to be a public authority created or recognized by a government body (00:06:17). They further detailed the dual fundamental role of registers: conducting legality checks to ensure compliance with legal frameworks (e.g., European directive 25/2025 regarding environmental requirements) and verifying information before disclosure to ensure compliance with both stored data and legal frames (00:07:23).

  • Inclusivity and Digital Maturity in the Global Trust Registry John Phillips and Alina Nica Gales discussed the importance of accommodating countries at different levels of digital maturity within the global trust registry. They agreed that while not all countries may have fully digitalized registers, the directory should still list their authoritative registrars and faithfully record their capabilities, even if digital capabilities are not yet present. This approach ensures that information about authoritative registrars is available globally, regardless of their digital advancement (00:10:20).

  • Pilot Progress and International Interest John Phillips provided an update on the pilot discussions from two weeks prior, noting continued interest and contributions from various countries (00:11:23). Alina Nica Gales confirmed that Spain's participation in the pilot is approved, pending budget allocation, while India and South America, through Marcos, have also expressed interest (00:13:34). Harmen van der Kooij added that the Netherlands should be considered formally involved, as their work includes collaboration with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce and the Dutch tax office (00:14:29).

  • Governance and Operations: Pre-Parade Concept John Phillips introduced the concept of a "pre-parade" to frame discussions on governance and operations, encouraging participants to consider what must be true for the project to be successful. This approach aims to identify necessary elements for success rather than focusing on potential failures (00:16:16). The discussion centered on how the UN/CEFACT authoritative registry directory (referred to as "card") would operate and be governed, with a focus on deliverables outlined in a logical model of the project (00:15:22).

  • Case Studies in Governance and Operations John Phillips presented two case studies: the International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) Public Key Directory (PKD) system and the UN/CEFACT Location Code (LOCODE) system (00:17:06). They explained that the ICAO PKD system, which facilitates international travel by sharing public keys for electronic passports, significantly reduces the number of bilateral agreements needed between countries and has a structured governance and fee-based sustainability model (00:19:00) (00:21:09). In contrast, the UN/CEFACT LOCODE system, which provides five-character alpha-numeric codes for global locations, operates on legacy IT systems, has infrequent updates, and is freely available, leading to a reliance on third-party solutions for real-time data access (00:27:26) (00:30:00).

  • Proposed Hybrid Governance System Alina Nica Gales suggested a hybrid governance system for the Global Trust Registry (GTR), drawing inspiration from both the ICAO PKD and UN LOCODE models (00:32:05). They proposed that a UN body anchor the GTR's policy authority and oversight to ensure legitimacy and transparency, while also incorporating structured, distributed participation from member states (00:33:05). Alina Nica Gales outlined a set of principles for governance, including UN anchoring and mandate, separation of roles for accountability, inclusiveness, transparency, sustainability, data integrity, and proportionate enforcement (00:34:25).

  • Key Governance Questions for the GTR Alina Nica Gales posed several critical questions for the Global Trust Registry (GTR) governance framework, including which UN body should anchor policy authority and oversight, the optimal participation model, and how technical operations should be organized (either by the UN or a UN-procured operator). They also highlighted concerns about ensuring long-term financial sustainability while maintaining accessibility for lower-income participants, the required baseline assurance mechanisms at launch (audit, incident response, dispute resolution), and managing interoperability and versioning over time (00:37:26).

  • Current Work and Future Steps for Governance Document Alina Nica Gales provided an overview of the draft governance document they are developing, which includes sections on governance principles, institutional setup (board, secretariat, operator), data objects held by the GTR, and admission/inclusion procedures for scheme owners with public law mandates (00:42:04). The document also covers ongoing obligations, update/change control, revocation/exclusion procedures, sanctions, appeals, and a cost-sharing model (00:43:21). John Phillips confirmed that this document will be shared in the project's delivery folder once ready, inviting feedback and comments from experts (00:46:25) (00:48:36).

Suggested next steps​

  • John Phillips will augment the description regarding the Dutch Chamber of Commerce and the DE tax office.

  • ALINA NICA GALES will share the draft of the governance requirements document and encourage contributions and comments on the suggestions.

  • John Phillips will clean and update document 4 by incorporating ALINA NICA GALES's text and calling it 'CARD' as a working title.

  • John Phillips and ALINA NICA GALES will share a note on groups.io and Slack to update participants when the document with governance procedures is ready and accessible in the folder.