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BC Government Aries OCA Bundle Registry Governance Document

Purpose

This Governance Document outlines how the OCA Bundle Registry is managed and governed. It defines the Roles and Processes needed to publish OCA bundles that are used by Hyperledger Aries Agents. These OCA bundles contain instructions to correctly process and display digital credentials.

The contents of the registry is maintained in the registry repository and managed through a pull request submission, review and approval process. The details of how pull requests are managed is outlined in this Governance section of the registry.

Roles

  • The BC Government Digital Trust Group is the governing authority over this repository. This group consists of a team of individuals within the Digital Credentials Services of the BC Government Ministry of Citizen's Services. This list is managed in the MAINTAINERS file.

  • Editors are individuals delegated by the BC Government Digital Trust Group to process issues and pull requests according to the rules defined in the Pull Request Handling section of this document. Editors are given GitHub Maintain role in the repository to manage their work. The Editors are listed in the MAINTAINERS in this registry repository.

  • Implementers are individuals or organizations that may add OCA Bundles to the registry for the Schemas they publish or verifiable credentials they issue.

  • For a new OCA Bundle, the Editors must contact and verify the identity of the implementer, and that the submitter represents the Implementer.

  • For an update to an OCA Bundle, the submitter is listed as Authorized in the OCA Bundle README.md file.

  • Contributors are individuals that submit pull requests that propose changes to the registry or any part of the repository that is the source of the registry. Anyone with a GitHub account can be a contributor.

  • Readers are individuals that read the registry and use the information there in to move forward their use of AnonCreds.

Types of Content

There are two types of content in the source repository for the registry:

  • The entries in the OCABundles Registry Repository.
  • The content of the entries are managed by the implementers of specific OCA Bundles.

  • The format of the entries MUST adhere to the guidelines outlined in the Adding an OCA Bundle documentation, as defined by the BC Government Digital Trust Group.

  • All other content in the registry and Registry Repository

  • Such content is governed by the BC Government Digital Trust Group, and includes things like this Governance section of the registry, the format of the method entries, how the registry is published, and so on.
    • Anything about the management of the registry may be changed through an update to this type of content.

Pull Request Handling

The BC Government Digital Trust Group MUST approve all changes to be merged into the registry (additions, updates and deletions) and to the rules for the management (governance) of the registry.

The BC Government Digital Trust Group has delegated to the Editors the authority to merge pull requests of any type of content as follows:

  • Based on an explicit authorization of the BC Government Digital Trust Group to merge the pull request; or
  • When, in the judgement of the Editors, the change is simple editorial update that improves the content of any type; or
  • When the pull request is to add or update a Registry entry, and, in the judgement of the Editors,
  • the entry adheres to the registry entry guidelines, and
  • the links in the registry entries resolve to relevant content (e.g. the specification of the method), and
  • the Editors have sufficiently verified the submitter of the pull request is an Implementer for the impacted OCA Bundle(s).

NOTE: In the future, it would be nice to add an automated authorization check via a GitHub Action to remove the verification burden from the Editors. For example, the submitter might need to provide cryptographically signed data using the DID related to the OCA Bundle.

The BC Government Digital Trust Group has delegated to the Editors the authority to cancel pull requests of either type of content as follows:

  • Based on an explicit authorization of the BC Government Digital Trust Group to merge the pull request; or
  • When, in the judgement of the Editors, the change is spam or a mistake, or
  • When, in the judgement of the Editors, the change is an attempt to update the content of an Implementer that is not authorized by the Implementer.
  • An Implementer MAY approve a Pull Request from a Contributor not otherwise authorized to update the content.
  • When, in the judgement of the Editors, the change is a simple editorial update that is either incorrect or does not improve the content.

The BC Government Digital Trust Group has delegated to the Editors the authority to raise (for discussion or vote) to the BC Government Digital Trust Group any other pull requests. Prior to the raising of a pull request to the leadership of the BC Government Digital Trust Group for processing, the Editors (and any other contributor) may work with the submitter of the pull request to clarify and/or improve the pull request such that it fits in the categories above for merging or cancellation.