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2026-05-28 1657 AEST – Notes

UN CEFACT GTR Project - AUS / EU​

May 28, 2026

Attendees​

  • Alina
  • Hans
  • Jo
  • John

Summary​

Project strategy discussion covered public review preparation and content alignment with governance requirements.

Public Review Preparation
The team established a late June deadline for public review materials to meet November 2nd plenary requirements. Strategy involves updating web content and creating a standalone recommendation document.

Documentation and Naming
Participants aligned documentation with secretariat deliverables and clarified that the project is the Global Trust Registry while the product is GRID. They agreed to develop a project specific glossary to improve term clarity.

Technical and Pilot Discussions
The group decided to simplify the Digital Identity Anchor definition by removing contentious phrasing to prevent legal misinterpretation. Architectural discussions focused on ensuring resilience for pilot prototypes.

Decisions​

  • Digital Identity Anchor definition review The team agreed to revisit the Digital Identity Anchor definition to address concerns regarding the ambiguity of the "functional equivalence" and "trust wrapper" terminology.

  • Public review and recommendation strategy The team confirmed readiness for public review and the necessity of creating a separate, standalone recommendation document to be used for the plenary.

  • Web content accessibility improvements The team decided to update website content to prioritize clear explanations of project objectives and outcomes for external audiences, rather than focusing on internal project management.

  • Documentation restructuring rejection The team decided against a full-scale restructure of the requirement documentation, agreeing instead to retain existing structures while refining requirement labels.

  • Future initiative collaboration topic The team aligned to flag the potential collaboration with other major initiatives as a standing discussion topic for future consideration.

Next steps​

  • [John Phillips] Update Website Content: Modify the homepage, about page, and pilots page based on the suggestions provided by Steve.

  • [The group] Map Deliverable Names: Align project deliverable names with the official titles provided by the secretariat.

  • [The group] Document Name Change: Provide an explanation regarding the project name evolution from Global Trust Registry to Global Register Information Directory.

  • [The group] Refine Definition: Update the Digital Identity Anchor definition to ensure simplicity and avoid potentially misleading terminology.

  • [The group] Create Glossary: Develop a comprehensive glossary of terms for the project to improve clarity and consistency.

  • [John Phillips] Update Project Schedules: Adjust project timelines to accurately reflect current progress and expected completion dates.

  • [Hans J. Huber] Verify Meeting Minutes: Utilize AI agents to review autogenerated meeting summaries for errors and inconsistencies.

  • [John Phillips] Prepare For Review: Execute necessary project modifications within 2 weeks to ensure readiness for the public review process.

  • [John Phillips] Flag Discussion Topic: Add an item regarding architectural observations and transparency graph fragility to the project discussion topics.

  • [Hans J. Huber] Contribute Trade Pilot: Submit the bill of exchange pilot project description for the trade finance use case.

Details​

  • Project Kickoff and Logistics: John Phillips opened the UN/CEFACT Global Trust Registry project meeting by reviewing the standard agenda, including the code of conduct and intellectual property rights, which are accessible via the provided project slides [00:00:00]. The session focused on meeting minutes, deliverables, and a review of project tasks.

  • Public Review Strategy and Timeline: John Phillips and Alina Nica Gales summarized recent discussions with Steve Capel and Kamola regarding public review readiness [00:01:17]. To meet the requirements for the November 2nd plenary, the team calculated they must work backwards to ensure the document is accessible to attendees significantly in advance, setting a target completion date for late June. It was determined that the project requires a two-pronged strategy: updating the web content and producing a standalone "recommendation" document in PDF format [00:02:07] [00:22:29].

  • Recent Technical Cleanup: John Phillips reported that Sangashan performed a large language model (LLM) review of existing web content. This process addressed various non-substantive issues, including grammatical inconsistencies, typos, and broken links, specifically within the glossary and other site sections [00:04:20].

  • Website Content Restructuring: John Phillips organized work tasks into specific child items categorized by page—home, about, documentation, and pilots—based on feedback from Steve Capel [00:05:17]. The primary goal of these updates is to adapt the web content for an external audience, such as government bodies, technologists, and registrars, who may lack the context of previous internal meetings [00:06:12]. The homepage will be updated to explicitly define the project's objectives and stakeholder groups [00:07:10].

  • Secretariat Deliverable Alignment: Alina Nica Gales proposed that the team should align the project's current documentation with the six deliverables originally provided by the secretariat [00:11:16]. John Phillips presented an existing mapping document that tracks these official deliverables against the project's current documentation to ensure traceability [00:12:22].

  • Project and Product Naming: The team discussed the distinction between the project name, Global Trust Registry (GTR), and the resulting product, GRID (Global Register Information Directory). They reached a consensus that while the project was named GTR, the produced directory is referred to as GRID, and they plan to clarify this connection within the project documentation [00:14:57].

  • Clarification of Participation Levels: Alina Nica Gales raised concerns regarding the ambiguity of participation requirements for registrars. John Phillips confirmed that existing text already explains that participation levels range from non-digital registrars to those utilizing full digital capabilities, and the team will ensure these sections are clearly indexed [00:15:50].

  • Registry Content Clarification: Alina Nica Gales noted that external stakeholders have asked whether the trust register stores actual entities or merely metadata [00:16:59]. John Phillips confirmed that the documents currently address this, and the team agreed to improve cross-referencing to these sections to satisfy inquiries from colleagues [00:18:07].

  • Issue Tracking Process: Jo Spencer and John Phillips discussed the process for managing ongoing improvements. They agreed to utilize a system of creating issues with child tasks to ensure each suggestion from stakeholders is tracked, managed, and closed appropriately, providing necessary traceability for the review process [00:18:53].

  • Requirement Formatting: Alina Nica Gales suggested that the mix of legal, technical, and governance requirements within documents is confusing [00:19:26]. While the group ruled out a full restructuring of the content as too resource-intensive, they agreed to improve the consistency of language (using standard "should" or "will" phrasing) and to improve indexing so that requirements are easier to extract from the supporting context [00:20:35].

  • Pilot Page Content: John Phillips and the group discussed the pilot page [00:23:24]. John Phillips emphasized that pilot projects serve as prototypes to test concepts rather than operational systems containing real data [00:24:08].

  • Digital Identity Anchor Definition: Alina Nica Gales, Hans J. Huber, and John Phillips debated the term "functional equivalence" in the Digital Identity Anchor (DIA) definition [00:25:16]. Hans J. Huber expressed concern that the term is poorly understood in the legal and MLATR (Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records) context [00:27:22]. The team reached a consensus to simplify the definition by removing the contentious phrase to prevent misleading legal interpretations, while retaining the core description of the identifier's role [00:30:04].

  • Project Glossary: John Phillips noted that the UNP project lacks its own glossary. The team agreed that developing a project-specific glossary would provide necessary clarity for terms and could potentially be adopted by the broader UNP initiative [00:33:30].

  • Architectural Resilience: John Phillips and Hans J. Huber engaged in a high-level architectural discussion regarding the UNP model [00:34:19]. They discussed the "fragility" of the linked data model if a participant node goes offline and explored solutions such as providing signed downloads of public keys or DIA data from the GRID [00:36:35] [00:38:27]. Jo Spencer emphasized that pilots must have the design flexibility to choose an approach that suits their specific volumetrics and resilience needs [00:39:24].

  • Pilot Project Proposals: Hans J. Huber proposed a pilot project involving the automatic acceptance of a bill of exchange triggered by an Incoterm, suggesting it could serve as a contribution to the project’s trade finance use cases. The team agreed this would provide valuable input to the project's development [00:41:12].

  • Collaboration with External Initiatives: John Phillips noted that Steve Capel suggested a potential meeting to coordinate with other major initiatives and non-profit organizations. Hans J. Huber expressed strong support for this collaboration, noting that the developments in various organizations are closely aligned [00:43:28].

  • Schedule Updates: John Phillips stated that they must update project schedules and timelines to reflect current progress, in response to a request from Kamola [00:44:15].

  • YouTube Playlist Review: John Phillips displayed the YouTube channel, noting that the meeting recordings have received a modest number of views, and confirmed that transcripts and minutes remain available for previous meetings [00:45:12] [00:46:56].

  • Closing: John Phillips reiterated the goal of addressing all current issues within the next two weeks to move toward the public review process, concluding the meeting at 10:00 [00:48:40].

Chat​

00:12:47.000,00:12:50.000

John Phillips: https://un.opensource.unicc.org/unece/uncefact/gtr/docs/About/\#deliverables