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Other Standards
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Informative
Relationships to Other Standards and Initiatives
UNTP builds upon existing work rather than re-inventing standards, maximising interoperability with similar initiatives. In many cases, UNTP provides complementary value — for example, by supplying a data exchange protocol for business standards. This page summarises related standards and their relationship to UNTP specifications.
Summary
| Standard | UNTP Relationship |
|---|---|
| W3C Verifiable Credentials (VCDM) | UNTP requires that product passports, conformity credentials, facility records, and traceability events be issued as W3C Verifiable Credentials, ensuring data integrity. |
| W3C Decentralised Identifiers (DID) | UNTP requires that a W3C DID, cryptographically linked to an authoritative register, identify all credential issuers. |
| ISO Product Circularity Data Sheet (PCDS)heet | UNTP provides an interoperable mechanism to digitalise ISO PCDS using the DPP and DCC Declaration structure. |
| CEN/CENELEC Digital Product Passport System | UNTP will ensure interoperability where overlap exists across 3 of 11 UNTP specifications. For example, where CEN DPP defines a specific data carrier and product identifier scheme, UNTP supports many existing industry schemes and will include CEN schemes in the list of supported schemes. |
| ISO Electronic Product Code Information Services | UNTP Digital Traceability Events present a simplified, conformant subset of ISO 19987, optimised for packaging as verifiable credentials. |
W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model
Standard overview
Credentials — driver's licences, diplomas, visas, permits, invoices — are integral to daily life. W3C Verifiable Credentials let these credentials be expressed on the web in a cryptographically secure, privacy-respecting, and machine-verifiable way.
UNTP relationship
UNTP issues all credentials (product passports (DPP), facility records (DFR), conformity attestations (DCC), traceability events (DTE)) as Verifiable Credentials to ensure security and integrity, regardless of how they are exchanged. UNTP also requires VC rendering templates, ensuring that all UNTP credentials are both human- and machine-readable. The UNTP VC Profile specification provides further detail.
W3C Decentralised Identifiers
Standard overview
W3C Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs) are a new identifier type that enables verifiable, decentralised digital identity. A DID refers to any subject — a person, organisation, thing, data model, or abstract entity — as determined by the DID's controller. The design lets the DID owner prove control without requiring permission from any other party. DIDs are commonly used as the issuer identifier for Verifiable Credentials.
UNTP relationship
The UNTP Verifiable Credentials Profile requires W3C DIDs as the issuer ID for all credentials (DPP, DCC, DTE, etc.), providing cryptographic, non-repudiable proof of issuer identity. In some cases — similar to well-known websites — a verifier can map a DID to a known identity. In most cases the DID will not be known to the verifier; UNTP therefore defines a Digital Identity Anchor that provides a high-integrity link between a DID and an identity in an authoritative register, such as a national business register.
ISO Product Circularity Data Sheet
Standard overview
ISO 59040 (the Product Circularity Data Sheet) defines a standard set of measures and a reporting standard for product circularity. It covers circular content — the extent to which a product is made from recycled materials — and circular design — the extent to which a product has been designed to facilitate repair, remanufacture, repurposing, and recycling. The standard is published as a PDF document with sample reporting layouts.
UNTP relationship
UNTP does not re-invent any ISO PCDS criteria. Instead, the UNTP Digital Product Passport provides a simple mechanism to digitalise product circularity data while remaining ISO 59040-compliant. The DPP data model includes the organisation, facility, and product metadata ISO 59040 requires. The Declarations structure within the DPP data model conveys each specific circularity criterion defined in ISO 59040. Because UNTP DPPs are both human- and machine-readable and carry other sustainability information — such as carbon footprint — manufacturers can issue a single DPP that conforms to multiple sustainability standards and serves both human and machine verifiers.
A sample ISO 59040-conformant UNTP DPP will be provided.
CEN/CENELEC Digital Product Passport Framework
Standard overview
The CEN/CENELEC Digital Product Passport Framework (CEN EU DPP) is a new initiative delivering the technical standards — data carriers, identifiers, data exchange — to support the European Commission's Eco-design for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). The CEN DPP working group defines three outputs:
- Unique identifiers — a system supporting both centralised and decentralised identifiers at model, batch, or item level.
- Data carriers — format, error correction, encoding methods, and printing and durability requirements for product data carriers such as QR codes.
- Data exchange protocols — an open, secure, high-integrity protocol for exchanging DPP data between systems, including access control for sensitive data.
This standardisation work is in progress and will be updated as new information is published.
UNTP relationship
UNTP is a voluntary standard designed to work with any existing industry-specific data carriers and identifiers, and within any member country's regulatory framework. For example, 100 million livestock in Australia carry RFID data carriers with NLIS identifiers that comply with national regulations. UNTP builds on W3C and IETF technical standards to ensure technical interoperability and uses semantic web technologies and established vocabularies for semantic interoperability. Interoperability with CEN/CENELEC DPP standards will therefore be straightforward.
- Identifiers and carriers: UNTP maintains a human- and machine-readable register of organisation, facility, and product identifier schemes, including data on how to parse data carriers, resolve identifiers to discover passports, and verify identifier ownership and passport integrity. Any EU product registers implementing CEN standards will be added to the UN register of schemes.
- Data exchange protocol: UNTP leverages open technical standards including JSON Schema, W3C JSON-LD semantics, and IETF Linksets. CEN DPP is likely to use similar standards. UNTP maps Digital Product Passport data to well-established semantic vocabularies — including vocabulary.uncefact.org and schema.org — and will maintain mappings to any EU-specific passport data semantics to ensure semantic interoperability.
UN/CEFACT remains committed to ensuring interoperability with CEN/CENELEC DPP standards as they emerge.
ISO EPC Information Services
Standard overview
ISO/IEC 19987:2024 is a well-established standard for supply chain traceability. It defines six event types that combine to describe a value chain from raw material to finished product: Object Event (e.g. an inspection), Transaction Event (e.g. a shipment from seller to buyer), Aggregation Event (e.g. loading packages onto a pallet), Transformation Event (e.g. a manufacturing process that consumes inputs to create outputs), and Association Event (e.g. linking products to other products or facilities).
UNTP relationship
The UNTP Digital Traceability Event (DTE) is a conformant, simplified profile of ISO 19987, identifying the minimum subset needed to support value chain transparency. The DTE profile is optimised for packaging as verifiable credentials and for discovery as linked data, rather than the machine-to-machine API mechanisms the ISO standard defines.