[Welcome Shelley Heckman to the blog, posting from iStandUK (original post here) about the Open Referral UK.Validator]
The iStandUK Technical Team recently met to align on the future of the Open Referral UK (ORUK) Validator. As stewardship of the Open Referral UK standard transitions into its next phase, we wanted to share where things stand and, importantly, invite the global Open Referral community to shape what comes next.
Clarifying the Purpose of the Validator
At its core, the Validator has a single, clear purpose: to assess whether a dataset conforms to an Open Referral specification. That specification may be a formally published schema or profile, or it may be a supplier-defined schema that varies in features but still meets the minimum requirements of the official standard.
The Validator plays an important role across the wider ecosystem. It enables data stewards to check their own data, gives suppliers a way to test and demonstrate their platforms, and supports commissioners in embedding validation requirements into contracts. At the same time, it provides reassurance to data consumers that a dataset is unlikely to cause issues when integrated into their services.
It is equally important to be clear about the Validator’s boundaries. It is not currently designed to assess data quality, carry out business validation, enforce the use of specific reference or master data, or determine whether a dataset meets the needs of particular use cases. Maintaining this clarity of scope helps ensure that the tool remains focused, reliable and maintainable as it evolves.
Stewardship, Governance and Collaboration
The ORUK Validator was originally developed under the UK Government’s Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). Following the transition of stewardship for the Open Referral UK standard in March 2026, ownership of the Validator has now passed to iStandUK, hosted by Tameside Council. This marks an important new phase, with iStandUK taking responsibility for maintaining and evolving the tool, while continuing to collaborate closely with MHCLG where appropriate.
The Validator code is maintained in the ORUK-Validator repository within the OpenReferralUK GitHub organisation, now managed by iStandUK, and is released under a BSD 3-Clause license to support open collaboration and reuse.
Alongside the main repository, there is also a separate fork maintained by an ORUK community contributor, Jeff Cumpsty at Binary Computer Solutions Ltd. This version introduces additional flexibility, particularly in relation to validating against different schemas. We recognise this as valuable innovation and are keen to explore how these enhancements can be aligned with, and potentially integrated into, the main codebase so that the wider community can benefit from a shared and coherent approach.
As repository owners, iStandUK will manage pull requests to the ORUK-Validator. While contributions may occasionally be declined, our strong preference is to avoid fragmentation of the codebase. We want to minimise hard forks and divergence, instead supporting a collaborative, community-led approach. This aligns with ongoing discussions within the Open Referral International Standing Technical Group around establishing a dedicated Validator Community of Interest.
Our aim is to foster a shared, community-driven roadmap for the Validator – one that keeps the ecosystem aligned and moving forward together.
Current Work and Future Direction
In the immediate term, our focus is on maintaining and improving the stability of the Validator service. The repository currently has two open pull requests, covering improvements to the CI/CD deployment processes and updates to dependencies via Dependabot. As these changes do not affect the Validator’s functionality, we are progressing them through review and merge, with the intention of deploying an updated version to the live service at https://www.openreferraluk.org/.
Alongside this near-term work, we are also looking ahead to how the Validator can evolve to better support the growing adoption of Open Referral in the UK and beyond. There are several areas where we see clear potential for enhancement.
One such area is the ability to validate against multiple schemas. While the Validator currently checks a dataset against its declared schema, extending this capability to include validation against agreed minimum standards would help establish a clearer national baseline. This, in turn, would support better tracking of adoption and contribute to a more transparent and interoperable data ecosystem.
We are also considering how to move beyond the current PASS/FAIL output when checking the dataset compliance process. Introducing more granular reporting could provide a clearer picture of partial compliance, offering tiered levels of conformance and more actionable diagnostics. This would position the Validator as a tool for continuous improvement, rather than simply a binary check.
In addition, we see strong value in developing a command line interface (CLI). This would allow users to run validations locally against full datasets, rather than sampled records, and to integrate validation more seamlessly into development workflows and automated pipelines.
Taken together, these areas represent a natural progression from maintaining the current service to enhancing its usefulness, flexibility and impact for the wider community.
Moving Forward Together: a Call to the Community
The Open Referral community has always been strongest when working collaboratively across borders. The Validator is a foundational tool and getting its direction right matters for everyone building, sharing, and consuming open data. We believe the evolution of the Validator will benefit from broad input across the Open Referral community. To support this, we are keen to convene a focused, international Validator Community of Interest as soon as possible to act in an advisory capacity.
This group will help to share ambitions and perspectives, explore and socialise proposed enhancements and contribute to shaping a coherent forward roadmap. It will also play a valuable role in encouraging collaboration around development, testing and deployment. The group will work in the open and it will consider and act on feedback on the Open Referral Forum.
While iStandUK will retain overall responsibility for decision-making and direction of the Validator, we see this Community of Interest as an important mechanism for ensuring that those decisions are informed by the experience, expertise and priorities of the wider community.
We’re excited about what comes next and we invite you to be part of shaping it.
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