History

The Developer Portal was established on 6 September 2026. The first standards in the VIN series were issued on the same day, the API Catalogue was opened and the interfaces then available were documented. The record below is added to as standards are revised and interfaces confirmed.

1. Before September 2026

   Interfaces agreed between pairs of organisations

   Before the Developer Portal existed, organisations that exchanged data across the Network agreed the form of each exchange between themselves. There was no common envelope, no shared means of asserting identity and no register of what interfaces existed or at what version.

2. 6 September 2026

   The Developer Portal is established

   The Developer Portal is established as the single point of reference for developers of systems that connect to the Network, at developer.gov.vin.

3. 6 September 2026

   The VIN series is opened

   Network standards are numbered in a single series and issued by version, so that a system can state the version to which it conforms.

4. 6 September 2026

   VIN-1 to VIN-5 issued at Version 1.0

   The Interoperability Baseline, Identity Federation, Incident Reporting Format, Registry Data Model and Message Envelope are published together at Version 1.0, with a comment period running to 4 December 2026.

5. 6 September 2026

   The API Catalogue is opened

   Six entries are made: registry lookup, identity assertion, incident submission and the notice feed as Interim, and the conformance record lookup and standards feed as Planned. Documentation of the four Interim interfaces is published.

6. 6 September 2026

   Conformance procedure and versioning policy published

   The procedure by which a member organisation declares the standards and versions its system implements, and the rules on version numbers, notice periods and reviews, are set out on this site. The Glossary is published the same day.

7. March and June 2027

   First reviews of the standards

   VIN-1, VIN-2 and VIN-5 are reviewed in March 2027, and VIN-3 and VIN-4 in June 2027, in the light of comments received and of the first months of operation.

8. Forthcoming

   Confirmation of the first interfaces

   Each Interim interface is confirmed at Version 1.0 once its documentation is complete, it has been stable for three months and two member systems have declared conformance to the standard it follows.

5

Standards issued at Version 1.0

4

Interfaces listed as Interim with documentation published

2

Interfaces listed as Planned

1

Numbered series for all standards

The current standards are listed under Standards, the current interfaces in the API Catalogue and the schedule of reviews under Versioning.