UK Compliance

Applicability

This page describes the rules for achieving compliance with the UK profile of LG Inform Plus, as required by most UK organizations that require compliance. The rules described here are in addition to the required endpoints and parameters for UK compliance, which are given in the API reference page.

Rules apply to the Open Referral Human Services Data Specification (HSDS) with the UK profile applied. This profile defines which fields are needed by a standard UK implementation.

Compliance rules apply purely to Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) because Open Referral is a standard for interchanging data. It does not concern itself with how data is stored.

These compliance rules apply to Open Referral versions 3.0 and above. For compliance with the prior Open Referral UK standard, see the Open Referral UK API Validation Rules.

All required and recommended API endpoints (also called “web methods”) are RESTful API GET queries to work over HTTPS. POST and PUT endpoints are not required but may be provided in some implementations.

The full syntax of API endpoints and responses are given in the API reference page.

Compliance rules

Openness

API endpoints must be publicly open without any need to register or apply API keys. They may be throttled to prevent excessive use and denial of service attacks.

All API endpoints (sometimes called “web methods”) from one publisher’s dataset must have the same API stub, e.g. https://bristol.openplace.directory/o/ServiceDirectoryService/v2 for the Bristol City Council services feed.

Security

To enable widespread use of APIs, especially by simple HTML/JavaScript applications, all HTTP responses will implement the following Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) header:

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

Open Referral version and profile

A HSDS 3.0 UK application profile is forthcoming. Required endpoints and parameters for UK compliance are provided in the API reference page.

Other properties and endpoints

Instances of Open Referral compliant directories may provide further endpoints and query response properties so long as they do not conflict with those in the Open Referral specification. We recommend using a convention to denote local (supplier-specific) properties.

Changelog

This section contains changes which are specific to the requirements for achieving UK compliance. For a list of changes to the broader HSDS standard, please see the Changelog page.

v3.0

Services

Added

alert
alternate_name
application_process
assurer_email
attributes (collection)
metadata (collection)
eligibility_description
fees_description
interpretation_services
last_modified
licenses
maximum_age
metadata
minimum_age
wait_time

Removed

deliverable_type
eligibilitys (collection)
holiday_schedules (collection)
reviews (collection)
service_taxonomys (collection)

Renamed

fundings to funding (collection)
regular_schedules to schedules (collection)

Phones

Replaced

contact replaced with description

Added

extension
languages
metadata
type

Contacts

Added

attributes (collection)
- phones
- program
- required_documents

Removed

service

cost_options

Added

attributes
metadata
currency

Removed

linkId
service

language

Added

attributes
code
name
metadata
note

Removed

language
serviceId

organization

Added

alternate_name
attributes
contacts
email
funding
legal_status
locations
metadata
organization_identifiers
parent_organization_id
phones
programs
tax_id
tax_status
website
year_incorporated

service_areas

Added

attributes
description
extent_type
metadata
name

service_at_locations

Added

attributes
contacts
description
location

location

Added

accessibility
addresses
alternate_name
attributes
contacts
external_identifier
external_identifier_type
languages
location_type
metadata
phones
schedules
transportation
url