An open protocol for sharing data between organisations

Organisations need to share data with one another: a supplier and a buyer, or many companies feeding into one shared service. Today that sharing usually runs through a party in the middle, a platform or a hub that sits between them. This is an open standard for a different route: a published, shared way for organisations to send encrypted data straight to each other, reach the right party, and keep a verifiable record that the exchange happened. Anyone can check that record. The data itself stays private.

When one operator sits in the middle, control concentrates. That operator sets the format, holds the list of who can reach whom, and becomes the thing everything else depends on; even federated networks still lean on a central authority for the rules and the registry. When those rules are written down in the open instead, any party can connect without asking permission, and anyone can verify a record for themselves. Control stays with the organisations exchanging the data.

The standard is published openly and owned by no one. Anyone can read it, and it is designed so that anyone can build their own version and run it themselves: no single provider owns the only implementation, so none can lock organisations in or quietly withdraw it. That is how the open protocols beneath email and the web have worked for decades.