UK NID?

[Andy Greener <[e-mail]>]

Hello,

I recently joined this list so forgive me if this has been discussed  
before (I did check the archive at www.nabble.com but couldn't see  
anything of direct relevance recently).

As my sig indicates I'm a technical consultant working for HM Revenue  
& Customs in the UK, and I'm also a member of a sub-committee of the  
UK CTO Council's Architecture Review Board that is considering the  
future of the UK GovTalk policies and standards web site (www.govtalk.gov.uk 
). As part of this work we are considering establishing a URN scheme  
for namespace naming of persistent artefacts (XML Schemas, code lists,  
etc) across the UK Government space, and naturally the subject of a  
"UK" NID came up.

I note that RFC3406 states that all two-letter combinations are  
reserved for potential use as countrycode-based NIDs for eventual  
national registrations of URN namespaces, but it hints at another set  
of definition & scoping rules for such namespaces. I also note that  
there are no existing two-letter NIDs on the IANA list, but that at  
least one country (New Zealand) has already tackled this issue and  
worked around it by using their ISO three-letter code instead (not an  
option for us as the three-letter code for the UK is "GBR", which we  
feel is inappropriate under the circumstances, as well as being  
somewhat "politically incorrect").

Are we on a hiding to nothing if we wish to pursue the "UK" NID? The  
registration would be made on behalf of the UK Govt by the Govt's CTO,  
and it is unclear to me who else would have ultimate authority to  
formally request this particular NID if it's not the UK government. I  
expect I'm opening a can of worms here, but if you don't ask you don't  
get! I'd be grateful for any guidance or advice anyone can give me.

The best qualifying alternative we can come up with is "UKGOV", but  
this is likely to be subsumed into any future "UK" NID anyway (not a  
desirable attribute for a supposedly persistent naming mechanism! -  
we'd like to do the "right" thing once, and for all).

	Andy

-- 
Andy Greener
Enterprise Architect
Architecture Solutions & Assurance
IMS Strategy & Architecture, HMRC

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