This TF schedules meetings as needed. Each meeting will be announced on the GSWG mailing list and the #governance-architecture-tf Slack channel.

The meetings (and Zoom links) are available on the ToIP meeting calendar:
LFX Meetings

Zoom Meeting Links / Recordings

Video and Transcript: Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing

Meeting starts 08:55 minutes in when the anti-trust statement is read.

Attendees

@John Phillips

@Neil Thomson

@Scott Perry

@Makki Elfatih

@Drummond Reed (still have three to choose from, I’ve chosen the first in the list presented to me)

@Jo Spencer

Agenda Items and Notes (including all relevant links)

Summary of meeting:

Summary of meeting generated by NotebookLM (notebooklm.google.com) from the transcript and chat messages….

Meeting Minutes

Governance Architecture Task Force Meeting Date: April 2, 2025 Time: 22:56 GMT

Attendees: John Phillips (Sezoo), Drummond Reed (Gen Digital), Scott Perry (Digital Governance Institute), Neil Thomson (QueryVision), Jo Spencer (Sezoo), Makki Elfatih (Hkdolts)

1. Antitrust Compliance and Meeting Start

John Phillips (Sezoo) began the meeting by reading a reminder about adhering to antitrust and competition laws and the participation rules for Trust over IP members.

Drummond Reed (Gen Digital) noted this was a particularly "stentorian reading".

John Phillips (Sezoo) explained that this explicit start helps identify the beginning of the meeting in the transcript.

2. Meeting Platform and Transcript Readability

Drummond Reed (Gen Digital) mentioned the W3C CG and other groups switching to Google Meet, which provides much more readable meeting summaries compared to transcripts.

John Phillips (Sezoo) suggested using AI tools to make sense of transcripts.

Drummond Reed (Gen Digital) agreed that Google Meet summaries are essentially doing this automatically.

John Phillips (Sezoo) observed that AI transcription engines seem better at understanding American accents compared to others, potentially due to more training data.

3. Revisiting the Governance Architecture Task Force Charter - Deliverables

John Phillips (Sezoo) proposed revisiting the charter, specifically the "deliverables" section, which had been discussed and amended in the meeting two weeks prior.

He clarified that previously listed "areas of focus or interest" were now termed "deliverables".

4. Intellectual Property (IP) Considerations

John Phillips (Sezoo) raised the issue of using externally published work, such as the white paper by Scott Perry (Digital Governance Institute) and Mathieu Glaude, within Trust over IP, given the different licensing requirements (commercial "all rights reserved" vs. Creative Commons for Trust over IP).

Drummond Reed (Gen Digital) confirmed that as a task force under a working group with existing IPR requirements, they must adhere to those, and any changes would need to occur at the working group level.

Scott Perry (Digital Governance Institute) clarified that deliverables created within Trust over IP are open source and can be used and adapted by others, but proprietary claims over the core concepts (e.g., governance meta-model) are incorrect. He noted that the use of these concepts in a specific engagement can be proprietary.

John Phillips (Sezoo) emphasized that Trust over IP would need to create its own specific work based on these topics, rather than simply copying existing material, to adhere to its licensing.

Scott Perry (Digital Governance Institute) agreed, stating that deliverables of the task force become the property of Trust over IP.

5. Focus on Trust Registries and Trans-Ecosystem Trust

John Phillips (Sezoo) observed that the current deliverables show a strong focus on trust registries. He argued that a single instance of a trust registry, while essential, does not necessarily solve the problem of trustworthy interactions across independent ecosystems, using the example of driving license recognition between states and the ICAO model for passports.

Drummond Reed (Gen Digital) agreed that trust registries address parts of the overall challenge but not the whole .

Scott Perry (Digital Governance Institute) concurred that a trust registry is a component but highlighted that the example of ICAO still involves a governance framework and a registry (albeit a simple one).

John Phillips (Sezoo) clarified that the existing top-level goals in the charter are not deliverables, but the subsequent three items are attempts to create tangible outcomes addressing those goals . He reiterated his point that the current deliverables might be too narrowly focused on single registry instances and might not fully address trans-ecosystem trust.

Drummond Reed (Gen Digital) noted that the third listed deliverable might be largely covered by the Trust Registry Query Protocol v2 (TRQP) specification . He suggested a paper explaining how trust can be registered and communicated between ecosystems using TRQP.

Neil Thomson (QueryVision) emphasized that trust between ecosystems relies on trust at key touch points and on aligning governance for verification, rather than requiring identical technical implementations . He stressed the need for semantic consistency in governance and technical requirements across ecosystems .

Scott Perry (Digital Governance Institute) suggested that a missing deliverable is a focus on how one ecosystem reviews another's governance framework and trust registry to establish reliance for cross-ecosystem trust .

John Phillips (Sezoo) agreed with this suggestion, seeing it as central to the discussion . He proposed a white paper exploring how an ecosystem can advertise and explain its governance in a machine-readable way to facilitate trans-ecosystem trust .

Jo Spencer (Sezoo) highlighted the need for implementation and operationalisation guidelines for trust registries, considering both their internal management and their interoperability across jurisdictions, including mutual recognition and the importance of agreed-upon use cases .

Makki Elfatih (Hkdolts) proposed that the current four listed items could be summarized into two documents: a process document and a governance interaction model . He also emphasized the crucial aspect of change management for agencies transitioning to digital trust registries .

6. Verifiable Trade and UN/CEFACT Protocol (UNTP)

Scott Perry (Digital Governance Institute) announced an upcoming meeting with Stefan Wolf on verifiable trade .

John Phillips (Sezoo) provided context on verifiable trade initiatives and the UN/CEFACT transparency protocol (UNTP), suggesting potential for collaboration and for verifiable trade to become an extension of UNTP .

Scott Perry (Digital Governance Institute) noted that Stefan Wolf's current presentation does not address governance aspects .

Jo Spencer (Sezoo) pointed out that Life already had a governance framework in place .

7. Agreed Actions and Next Steps

John Phillips (Sezoo) proposed removing the word "draft" from the front of the newly listed deliverables in the charter.

Agreement was reached to keep the current four deliverables as listed in the Governance Architecture Task Force charter. These are:

1. Create a complete lifecycle for a record on a trust registry.

2. Document the governance requirements for a trust registry.

3. Document the structure of authority statements, including the format of the records.

4. Explore mechanisms for trustworthy interactions across independent ecosystems.

The task force acknowledged the importance of change management for organisations adopting digital trust registries as raised by Makki Elfatih (Hkdolts) . This will be a consideration in future discussions.

Meeting Adjourned: 01:06 GMT

Chat notes

01:05:38 Makki Elfatih (Hkdolts): I think adding a point on change management is very important, especially as many agencies try to go from a paper based system to a fully digital trust registry
01:05:52 Drummond Reed (Gen Digital): Reacted to "I think adding a poi..." with 👍