In February, we convened the Perseus Technical Advisory Group, chaired by Icebreaker One.

Date: 4th February 2025 10:00-11:30 BST

Location: online

Chair:

  • Frank Wales, IB1

Secretariat: IB1

A note from the Chair, Frank Wales:

We had a brisk start to Perseus in 2025 with AG2’s first meeting. We looked at the ambitious plan to move beyond our current pilot to the launch of Perseus in production by the end of the year, and had a great, informative discussion on what ‘production-ready’ means for our members.

We also got valuable feedback on our work in progress to make Perseus technical adoption straightforward, and shared what we’d learned so far from the Perseus pilot, which will run until Q2.

We’re convening two working groups to support AG2’s work in the first half of the year: one imminently to work on the scope and details of production infrastructure, and one soon to work on documentation and onboarding. Both working groups need experienced volunteers to make sure that Perseus is the best it can be, so get in touch if you would like to help, or can think of a colleague who would be a great fit.

My thanks to everyone who joined us — see you again in May!

Meeting Aims

  1. For members to review and agree on the scope of AG2 for 2025 
  2. Gain a clear idea of what is going to be asked of AG2 in 2025
  3. Working groups constituted and next actions planned

Summary:

  • It was agreed that members will support the running of the proposed Working Groups
  • It was noted that the plan for Perseus in 2025 is to move from the pilot phase to production by Q4, using lessons from the pilot to get to this position
  • It was noted that the focus of AG2 will move from fundamental design to operational design as Perseus moves from pilot tech to a system that is robust, scalable, supported and maintainable 
  • The AG scope for 2025 was presented to members for comment and review, it was noted that:
    • In Q1, 2 working groups will be set up to begin work on the Production Readiness Plan, draft security approach and the structure and introduction of the documentation 
    • In Q2 there will be updates to the tech specs driven by UX testing feedback and a review and report on technical learnings from the the pilot
    • Q3 will see a focus on the plan for production launch alongside a review of the updated documentation
    • In Q4 the WGs will be working on producing a report on the technical design of Perseus-B, the scope and plan for 2026 technical work and contributing to the 2025 Perseus report 
  • It was noted that the first CAPs are expected to be integrated by the end of the quarter with documentation and materials having been developed to help streamline the process 
  • It was noted that the requirements are not straightforward and the provenance microservice is proving novel, with some finding the FAPI version of OAuth to be slightly complicated
    • Members need time, information and support to get oriented and integrate into their own systems.
  • It was noted that building blocks are being developed to make Perseus as easy as possible to adopt from a technical perspective and to reduce the time to production
    • To tackle the novelty of provenance a python reference library is being provided and there is work on creating a microservice for those that don’t use python.
    • The provenance microservice would be a stateless container to run “anywhere” with a single API call to perform multiple operations.
    • The use of a FAPI wrapper would implement all the boilerplate for using an existing OAuth server and APIs 
  • It was also noted that a lot of organisations do not have a container infrastructure so giving a python source code for a wrapper could be used as an alternative 
  • Members discussed what ‘production ready’ means and it was noted that:
    • There is a need to think about non functional requirements in more depth 
    • Being production ready requires having documentation in place for people to support
    • There must be clear lines of accountability to understand who is delivering what and the process for escalation when things go wrong
    • There must be assurance of robust security and compliance
  • There was discussion around the potential to understand the tech requirements from the banks perspectives, it was noted that this would offer useful insight into the level of tech integration from the varying sizes of banks involved 

Next meeting: May 2025

Formal records are maintained by the secretariat. These are confidential to the Advisory Group Members.