OPEN STANDARD · DRAFT v0.1
A common standard for how AI agents read and use government services.
Passports, visas, driver licensing, company formation — every government process is a form with rules. GovSchema publishes those forms as open, versioned, machine-readable schemas, together with the verification practices that confirm each schema still matches its live government source. Agents build on the standard; the people they act for get a result they can trust.
§1What GovSchema is
Software agents are increasingly asked to interact with government services on a person's behalf. Today each agent re-discovers, by hand, what a given form asks for, which answers are valid, and how the steps connect — and has no reliable way to know when a government quietly changes the form. The result is brittle, unverifiable, and different for every team.
GovSchema is a foundation building the standard layer that sits between agents and government services. We are to agent–government interaction what bodies like ISO, IETF, and W3C are to their domains: we publish a versioned specification, a public registry of conforming schemas, and documented methods for verifying them. We do not build agents and we do not transact with governments. We define the shared contract that responsible agents can be built on top of.
§2Two definitions everything rests on
- Schema noun
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A standardized, machine-readable definition of a single government form or process — its fields, their types and validation rules, and the flow of steps. An agent can read a schema programmatically instead of guessing at a web page. Each schema records its jurisdiction, its authoritative source URL, and a version.
Example: the schema for a national passport-renewal form lists every field an applicant must provide, which combinations are valid, and the order the steps occur in.
- Verification practice noun
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A documented, repeatable method for confirming that a published schema still matches the live government source it describes. Verification is what separates a standard from a guess: a schema is only useful if you can show it is accurate and current.
Example: a verification practice specifies how and how often a schema is re-checked against the official source, and how a mismatch is recorded and resolved.
§3Who this is for
For agent developers
Consume schemas as structured data with stable identifiers, explicit validation rules, and semantic versioning. Validate your handling of a form against the published schema, pin to a version, and see when a new version supersedes it. Build once against a verified contract instead of scraping and re-scraping a page that can change without notice.
- Machine-readable, JSON Schema–based format
- Versioned with a clear supersession trail
- Every schema carries its source and verification status
For the people agents act for
When an agent helps you renew a passport or register a business, you should be able to trust that it is working from an accurate, current understanding of the real form — not a stale or invented one. GovSchema is the open, independent record of what each government process actually asks for, kept honest by published verification. It is public, non-profit, and checkable by anyone.
- Independent and non-profit — no product to sell you
- Open and inspectable, not a black box
- Built to be accurate against the real source
§4How the standard works
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1
Specify
The specification defines one common format for describing any government form or process: fields, types, validation rules, flow steps, plus conventions for identifiers, jurisdiction, source URL, and version.
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2
Author & register
Contributors author schemas for concrete processes that conform to the specification and submit them to the public registry, where each is reviewed and versioned.
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3
Verify
Each schema is checked against its live government source using a documented verification practice, and its verification status is recorded openly.
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4
Consume
Agent developers read schemas from the registry, validate against them, and pin to a version — building on a contract they can trust and re-check.
§5Where we are
We are founding the standard. The work in progress is open and honest about its stage — early, but built to last and built in public.
| Specification | Draft v0.1 | in progress |
|---|---|---|
| Registry & versioning | Layout in progress | in progress |
| Verification practice | Methodology v0.1 drafting | in progress |
| Reference schemas | Format references published | in progress |
| Governance | Foundation, non-profit | done |
§6Get involved
GovSchema is being built in the open. The draft specification, the schema registry, and the verification practices are public in the source repository. Standards are stronger when more jurisdictions and more builders shape them — if you work on agents or know a government process well, read the spec, review the registry, and propose schemas.