October 26, 2023 Technical Committee Meeting Note

Attendees

@Steve Conrad @Dominika Bieńkowska (Deactivated) @Rachel Lawson (Unlicensed) @Vasil Kolev @Valeria Tafoya @Kibuuka, Arnold @Wes Brown @Farai Mutero @Shukla, Ayush @Ravi Prakash V@Ravi Prakash @Ain Aaviksoo @Lekan Osoba @Trev Harmon @PSRAMKUMAR

Agenda

Presenter

Duration

Discussion

Agenda

Presenter

Duration

Discussion

Review pending action items

@Esther Ogunjimi

10 minutes

TECH-654: Updates based on technical reviewDone

  • ID BB (2)

  • Messaging BB (1)

TECH-670: Candidate ProductsDone Candidate Products

  • Consent BB

Feedback from other participants. Please document any feedback/action items here: Egypt Deep Dive Takeaways

@Ain Aaviksoo to send roadmap for post release to Wes.

SwaggerHub and tools for developing APIs

@Steve Conrad

15 minutes

Possible Alternatives:

Redoc (Redoc )

Swagger Editor (Swagger Editor )

Swaggerhub was used to edit and maintain the API definitions for the various building blocks. Is there a need for the different building block groups to use swaggerhub to edit and maintain their APIs? And if it is not Swaggerhub, are there alternatives?

The API definitions is in GitBook, but the building block leads need to be able to create YAML files.

Ain - it was much easier to maintain the APIs with SwaggerHub.

BB Deep Dive

  • eMarketplace BB

@Ravi Prakash V

30 minutes

Questions about eMarketplace and referencing beckn protocol TECH-825: 23Q3 - W3 Tech Review IssuesDone

Steve - GovStack is trying not to single out any specific product and though Beckn is not a product but a protocol. But, we need to always walk that balance between what are our best practices or what things are commonly used within a specific domain versus being prescriptive or referring that GovStack is pointing to what to use or not use.

Is Becky defacto standard everywhere or are there other competing standards within this domain?

Ravi - Beckn protocol is a way to reimagine how digital transactions are being done today. It creates layer on top of the existing Internet infrastructure and imagines the fundamental interactions of commerce which are discovery, ordering fulfilment and post fulfilment stuff like rating and support etc. Beckn then adds this commerce context to the existing generic standards of communications that already exist on the Internet. It allows platforms to interoperate using common set of interaction protocol specification; it is a layer on top of HTTP and transport agnostic. It does not rely on HTTP as a standard, It can be implemented on Websockets or any other technology.

It allows other platforms to have a typical consumer provider interaction and these consumer provider interactions can be broken down into 10 fundamental interactions which have been codified into API specification as Beckn protocol.

Beckn seems relevant for GovStack as it will allow information to be shared at the edges between citizen interface and eMarketplace as there are loads of sensitive data/information that gets transmitted between a citizen and government.

Beckn only specifies the endpoints that are related to various fundamental interactions between consumer and provider.

Ramkumar - From GovStack point of view, Beckn is agnostic to the type of interface like rest APIs or any other type of interfaces to establish linkages between the different parties. This protocol will run between two end applications (buyer and seller) that are registered to IM.

  1. Can we say that Beckn protocol is an instance or an example of a standard that GovStack have referred to because we find all the qualities available there but, we are not enforcing that everyone should use only Beckn protocol.

  2. It is important to mention that Beckn is agnostic because it does not compete with the GovStack assumption that we are standardising on rest APIs for actually interfacing the applications and IM etc.

These two points above should be clarified in the document so people are not confused with Beckn protocol API and rest API.

Steve - We need to have a clear picture of how the eMarketplace interact with other BBs that have been defined by GS and draw out that more in the spec; this will show how eMarkeptplace fits in nicely to the whole GS paradigm.

Ravi - It is important to distinguish between what is happening inside the eMarketplace vs how the eMarketplace communicates with the rest of GS ecosystem. The previous assumption was that eMarkeptplace is the entire boundary where the consumer and the seller are both on.

Status update

 

15 minutes

2023-2024 Roadmap and priorities

@Wes Brown

15 minutes

Focus on expert review: https://govstack-global.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/GH/pages/111771696

API versioning

@Steve Conrad

15 minutes

How do we link GovStack release versions with API versions? Should we use semver for APIs?

Action items

@Esther Ogunjimi to send reminder to Wave 1&2 Leads to post their release note on TC channel or let us know if there is no changes to the spec and no release note
@Steve Conrad to follow up with Ramkumar, Alex and Benjamin on SwaggerHub and find out the cost estimate.
@Ravi Prakash To refine the spec to better articulate eMarketplace within the context of GovStack and other services.

 

Decision