Rules and rulebooks

For a network to be trustworthy, everyone has to follow the same rules and those rules have to be written down openly. Tamga’s rules are collected in one place: the Tamga ARF. It is built in the same order as the framework the European Union wrote for its own wallets.

Tamga ARF: the main document

ARF stands for “architecture and reference framework”. It describes who makes up the network, how it works, where trust comes from and how security and governance are organised. For an institution’s manager or a state representative, this is the starting point.

Trust Framework

The legal and governance side of the network: who can join, how to apply, what happens to those who break the rules, how a role is handed over. It is the network’s counterpart to Europe’s eIDAS regulation and its implementing acts.

Tamga Rulebook

Numbered, binding rules for each role. That a verifier may ask only for the information in its registration, or that an issuer must keep its own key, is written here. Each rule has a code, so in an audit the question “which rule was broken?” is answered in a single line.

Credential-type rulebooks

Each credential type has its own rulebook that branches off the Tamga Rulebook: it inherits the common rules and adds only the rules specific to that type. There are three today:

• Education Rulebook: student certificate and diploma.
• Identity Rulebook: the provisional identity credential.
• Event Ticket Rulebook: event tickets.

A new type, such as a professional licence, only arrives with its own rulebook once a checklist is complete.

How do the rules become binding?

When an institution joins the network, it accepts these rules through a participation agreement. So it is joining that makes them binding. The technical details are in the specifications in the developer docs: the rules say what must be done, the specifications say how.