[urn] Concern Regarding the Proposed Registration of the URN :GLUE Namespace

Dear Members of the URN: community,

I signed up for the URN mailing list ([email protected]) in 2024 and have been
following the discussions with interest, gaining a whole new level of
respect for you and the committee members. When I saw the original message
on March 3rd from Michael Jones regarding the proposed URN namespace GLUE,
I reviewed the draft specification (draft-ietf-spice-glue-id). After
looking more closely at the proposal, I felt compelled to share some
concerns directly with the community.

In a note to the list on March 11th, Mr. Saint-Andre raised an important
point regarding coordination with the organizations responsible for the
identifier systems being incorporated:

“*One straightforward consideration that comes to mind is making sure that
the registrants for these ‘incorporating URN namespaces’ have coordinated
with those who originally defined the identifier systems to be
incorporated.*”

This observation resonated strongly with me. Many of the identifier systems
referenced in the draft such as LEI, GLN, DUNS, PEN, SWIFT and ISO
represent infrastructure that has taken years to develop and, in many
cases, substantial financial investment to operate and govern.

For example, the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) operates
the LEI system on behalf of the Financial Stability Board following the
G20’s call for a global identifier for legal entities participating in
financial transactions. The ecosystem includes accredited LEI issuers
worldwide and significant operational infrastructure. Last June in London,
at the SWIFT offices, I met and spoke with Karla McKenna from GLEIF
regarding their expanding APIs and the development of the vLEI, which will
allow real-time organizational validation.

Because of the scale and governance structures around systems such as LEI
and GS1 identifiers, creating equivalent identifiers under URN raises
concerns about potential confusion or duplication.

The draft itself notes that:

urn:lei
is equivalent to
urn:glue:lei

However, the GLUE specification also states in Section 7.2.1:
“Resolution: Resolution of GLUE URNs, which are identifiers, is not
performed.”

This appears to introduce a namespace that references identifiers
maintained by other global authorities without providing a resolver or
governance mechanism comparable to those already operated by those
organizations. Given the scale of existing infrastructures for example the
LEI network of issuers or GS1’s global identifier systems it seems possible
that the introduction of URN:glue identifier could create ambiguity within
existing ecosystems.

Additionally, Section 7.1.2 proposes registering authorities such as gln,
lei, duns, pen, and iso within the GLUE registry, with the change
controller listed as the IETF. From the perspective of the organizations
that operate these systems, this may appear as though governance of
identifiers tied to their infrastructures is being partially abstracted
into an IETF-controlled namespace.

My intent in raising these points is not to oppose the technical goals of
the work, but rather to ensure that the broader ecosystem of standards
bodies and identifier authorities is considered. Many of these
organizations including ISO TC 154, ISO TC 68 (ISO 20022), and ISO/IEC JTC
1 SC 42 (AI) operate under formal governance frameworks and long-standing
coordination processes.

By way of background, I currently participate in the technical working
group of ISO 17369(SDMX) under ISO TC 154, and I collaborate with
colleagues (as listed in the previous paragraph) and work across several
addtional standards communities. We are also in the final stages of
completing the URN:SDMX registration application, with the European Central
Bank currently serving as the secretariat. Once they give their blessing,
we will submit our formal application to this committee.

As part of that work, we also implemented our own resolver service.

https://urn.sdmx.io

Because of this experience, I felt it was important to share these
observations directly with this committee. While I am not a member of the
URN committee, I have followed the discussion and wanted to share some
constructive feedback while the work is still progressing.

If the committee believes it would be useful, I would be more than happy to
assist in facilitating dialogue with relevant standards bodies or
identifier authorities to ensure alignment across communities.

Thank you for reading this message and I look forward to hearing your
thoughts.

I wish you a relaxing week ahead.

Best regards from Prague,


<http://smartxdata.com/>

*Tom Roberts*

*Chief Data Officer / Founder*

*ISO 17369 TWG Member*

*Eurofiling Member*

*Mobile **CZ: +420 773 532 216 <+420%20773%20532%20216>*

*Mobile US: +1 689-837-7529 <+1%20689-837-7529>*

*Email: [email protected] <[email protected]>*




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