Scope and Areas of Work

The DC-VPA will structure its work around five key areas:

Authority, Provenance and Authenticity — How voluntary republishers should clearly identify the issuing authority and faithfully present the official public alert, including its source, geographic and temporal scope, and authenticity.

Geographic Targeting and Timeliness — How Internet services at global scale should determine whether an official public alert applies to a particular user while protecting geolocation privacy, as well as handling latency, expirations, updates, and cancellations.

Interoperability and Technical Implementation — Practices that enable official public alerts to move reliably among public authorities and VPA services, including Internet publication and subscription mechanisms, persistent alert identifiers, geospatial filtering, and appropriate security and authentication mechanisms.

Accessibility and Inclusion — How VPA can contribute to equitable access for people with disabilities, older persons, people with limited connectivity, people using different languages, and communities poorly served by conventional public alerting channels.

Policy, Public-interest and Legal Considerations — The respective roles and responsibilities of public authorities and voluntary disseminators; public-interest responsibilities, trust and accountability; intellectual-property and licensing; and applicable legal or regulatory frameworks.

The DC-VPA is open to all interested parties. The coalition will prioritize broad geographic diversity, focusing on engaging countries and communities whose perspectives are traditionally underrepresented in international technology policy discussions. To align with the IGF's multistakeholder structure, the coalition will actively engage participants across distinct stakeholder communities such as the following.

Intergovernmental Organizations & Government Authorities

Private Sector & Technical Community

Civil Society, Humanitarian & Academic Communities