January 18, 2024 Technical Committee Meeting Note

Review pending agenda items

@Esther Ogunjimi

 10 minutes

• Overview of the testing harness

• Next steps as far as onboarding new DPGs into GovStack through the test harness

@Steve Conrad

@Nico Lueck

30 minutes

GovStack testing

How to use the testing harness web app to check both functional requirements as well as API testing on DPGs - to check their alignment against the BB specs.

The API testing part of the web platform is done. This means a DPG can onboard, set up some configuration files and then run a series of tests to check and see if the APIs that the DPG provides aligned with the APIs that are defined in the building block specifications.

What is new on the testing app is the software requirements compliance. This shows the self assessment that allows DPGs give checklist of what is needs to be done - to show the level of compliance of a DPG against a BB spec.

The first part of the compliance process is that a DPG is required to have information on how they can deploy their software in a container like Docker; by providing a link or a file. The self assessment will be reviewed by the GS team.

David - What was presented on the web app is similar to what is already existing on Confluence. Will this be merged across the ones on Confluence and on the testing platform? Or will it be reentered by the DPGs?

Nico - the data migration hasn’t been discussed.

Martha - If a DPG goes through the process and ticked the wrong boxes on the web app to show they are more compliant when they are not. Is there a capability to double check that such DPG is wrong?

Steve - It might be hard to verify as the models borrowed a little bit from other organisations. We have to learn and grow to understand what's easy to validate and what's not. Maybe there will be disclaimers on this

Nico - We do not have any automatic categorisation yet, it is still a manual procedure.

Next steps are to do testing of the app and the concept; do some pilots with the some candidates and then revise the definition of compliance before going out to a broader audience.

Trev - The fact that this is self-attested will likely be lost on third-parties viewing it. So, it may appear as GovStack endorsing their compliance. How do we handle the reputations risk this generates?

Wes - We could put a process in place to support the DPG revalidation if need be, but we do not have the manpower to do so for now.

We also have been very careful not to say anywhere that we are doing an actual validation of any software platforms because we don’t have manpower to do that nor it’s not our mandate to do so. We are not endorsing software!

Nico - The next steps are

• Working with the comms team on how to easily display the test harness web app on GS website.

• Iterate the compliance definition

Finding new Experts for WGs

@Martha Mundas

5 minutes

Is any WG looking for new experts and new contributors?

Received from the consent working group an individualised call for experts Call: Experts for GovStack's Consent Working Group. Will this be an option for the other WG groups to create a similar document which can then be circulated widely?

Arnold - Payment WG would be happy to receive more contributors as we move into the current spec review and the next UCs

Farai - Workflow WG is open to having new people joining the team.