Define the answer and its source
Choose the source information and how to derive the permitted answer. Return only the defined facts, such as a residence region without the street address, or adult status without a date of birth.
Evidence Gateway
Answer the question. Keep the records.
Give approved services signed facts and limited answers from sources your organization maintains. Define what each answer means, what it may reveal, and who may receive it, while keeping the full source record in your own system.
One example: a supplier registration check
Does this supplier have an active business registration?
A government procurement service needs the answer before processing a supplier’s application. The business registry can provide that status while keeping addresses, filing history, and other details out of the response.
Procurement service
Is this business actively registered?
A-1042Kept by the business registry
Source record
Business registration A-1042
- Registration status
- Active
- Registered address
- 12 Market Road
- Filing history
- 4 filings
The registry continues to maintain these fields.
Returned to the service
Signed answer
Procurement service receives
- Registration status
- Active
Digitally signedBusiness registry
The service checks the issuer, signature, and validity dates before use.
Kept at source Address, filing history, and other source fields.
Audit The request and its outcome are recorded.
The digital signature acts as a seal: the service can check that the expected issuer produced the answer and that it has not been altered. The procurement service remains responsible for deciding what that answer means for the application.
An answer both teams understand
Agree the question, the source, and who may ask.
An answer can confirm adult status, report registration status, or return a residence region. The registry team and receiving services agree what each answer means. Evidence Gateway applies those definitions and the organization’s access rules to each request.
Limit who may ask
Authorize services for defined answers and agreed purposes. Evidence Gateway checks that permission before consulting the configured source and records the outcome of the request.
Keep answers current
Set how long an answer is valid. Your team keeps the source current and defines how its age is checked; the receiving service verifies the answer’s dates and signature before use.
How it fits your organization
Keep maintaining the register where it is.
Evidence Gateway can use an existing source. Your organization keeps ownership of its records, continues to maintain them in its current system, and decides which services may receive each answer.
Using Evidence Gateway does not require Base Registry Engine. If you choose both, your technical team configures the connection between them.
- Your registry team defines the answers
- Agree what each fact means, its permitted uses, and the source responsible for the underlying information. The same source can support different defined answers for different services.
- Your technical team connects the source
- Configure how Evidence Gateway reads the necessary information, checks requests, and signs answers. Your team operates the service and manages its access rules.
- The receiving service makes its decision
- Its team verifies the answer and decides how to use it alongside its own rules and other information. Your organization remains responsible for the decisions its services make.
- Answers a person can carry, from systems you already run
- An answer can also be issued as a credential a person keeps in a digital wallet and presents to other services. Health information systems and civil registration systems can serve as sources. Tutorials show a credential from a health record and a birth certificate credential from OpenCRVS.
For developers and implementers
Request and verify your first signed answer.
The introductory tutorial asks “Is this person an adult?” Run a synthetic source, define the question, and verify the signed answer without returning the person’s name or date of birth.
Run the adult-status tutorial →
Read the product documentation →- Source connection
- The tutorial supplies a local source. An institutional HTTP source needs a reviewed configuration describing the connection and how to derive the answer.
- Answer and verification
- The tutorial covers signed JWS and SD-JWT VC assertions. The receiving service verifies the expected issuer, signature, request binding, and freshness.
- When a service needs selected fields
- Registry Relay supplies permitted data fields for services that need more than an answer to a predefined question.
Work with us
Get help when you need it.
Get hands-on help through a paid implementation pilot, or ongoing support while your team builds and runs the solution.
Implementation and support