An organization checking a professional qualification needs to know who has the authority to issue it and whether that authority still applies. When the qualification comes from another country or sector, finding the right source can become a project of its own.
That practical problem sat behind the shift we saw at the Global Digital Collaboration (GDC) conference in Geneva this September. The conversation has moved beyond explaining what a trust registry is. Increasingly, the questions are where the registries are, how to reach them, and what it will take to make them useful together at a global level.
For Ayra, that is an encouraging change. It brings the work closer to the problems organizations face when they need an authoritative answer from outside their own network.
The institutions already hold many of the answers
A trust registry makes information about authority available under defined rules. It can help establish whether an organization is authorized to issue a particular credential, or whether a professional’s licence is current. The authority behind the answer matters as much as the mechanism used to retrieve it.
Licensing bodies, accreditation organizations and government authorities already maintain this kind of information. They have their own mandates, responsibilities and ways of making it available. An organization outside their usual community may struggle to discover the right source, understand what an entry means, or establish whether it can use that answer for its purpose.
A digital signature can establish that information came from a particular signer and has not been altered. Establishing the signer’s authority for the claim requires governance too. Technological trust and human trust both have work to do.
The GDC Trust Registries Task Force addresses this connection between infrastructure and governance, with globally interoperable registries as its objective. Our takeaway from Geneva is that the practical questions around that objective now deserve much more attention.
The task force’s draft Issuer Trust Registry Governance Framework gives that work a concrete starting point. Its initial scope is government issuers of identity documents, covering how registries express authorization and recognition while preserving the authority behind the answers. It is a working draft for discussion, with open questions for further work.
What a global registry-of-registries capability needs
A registry of registries helps an organization or system find relevant registries and understand the authority, scope and recognition behind them. It gives independent sources a way to become useful beyond the communities that already know them.
Start with discovery. Someone needs an answer: which registry can provide it, who is responsible for that registry, and how can it be reached? A useful entry needs enough context to distinguish an authoritative source for one purpose from a source that has no authority over that question.
Then comes recognition. One ecosystem may recognize another registry for a particular purpose. That relationship needs a clear scope. Recognition of a professional qualification for one activity does not automatically establish permission to practise every related activity in another jurisdiction. The authority remains responsible for its domain. The relying party, meaning the organization or system using the information, applies its own applicable policy.
The registry informs the decision. The relying party makes the decision.
Keeping the information current is part of the same job. Responsibilities change. Authorizations expire. Services become unavailable. Participants need agreed ways to maintain registry information and handle changes, including distinguishing an explicit negative answer from an answer that could not be obtained.
The technical work must support those responsibilities. Registries need defined ways to be discovered and queried, with evidence that implementations meet the relevant requirements. Different ecosystems can retain their choices about credential formats and delivery while agreeing how their registries interact.
Global reach also requires governance that independent participants can accept. They need to understand who controls the common rules, how disagreements are handled, and who is accountable for the shared service. Other registries of registries may exist alongside it. Useful connections must be able to accommodate that reality.
Ayra’s part in the work
Ayra is a neutral nonprofit bringing independently governed trust registries together. We are building a registry of registries with our members and partners to anchor the Ayra Trust Network. Ayra will operate a shared layer and coordinate the governance and registry interactions around it. Other registries of registries can coexist and interoperate with it, while participating authorities and operators remain responsible for their own registries.
We have always described Ayra as a thin, neutral and global layer: limited to the common work needed between registries, governed to preserve participants’ authority and decision rights, and designed for use across jurisdictions. Our ambition is a global registry of registries within a world of independently governed networks.
The next useful step is a concrete connection. Identify an organization that needs an answer, the authority that can provide it, and the registry interaction that would make the answer usable. Then add another independent participant and establish which parts of the work can be reused.
GDC reinforced the need to get on with that work. If you operate a registry, build services around authoritative information, or need an answer from another ecosystem, bring that specific problem to Ayra. It is the starting point for a connection worth building.
For members, What GDC reinforced about Ayra’s registry-of-registries strategy goes deeper into the pattern, what it means for your organization, and where to start building a useful connection. This member-only article connects the conference takeaways to practical business and institutional opportunities. If your organization is exploring this work, talk to us about participating in Ayra.