> Has anyone done any work on the different systems for persistent unique
> identifiers? I need to make recommendations regarding the best way forward
> for the UK government and would love to see some independent research, or
> hear about people's experience.
Can you give more information about what exactly you need.
The web way of identifying anything is to use URIs. "Persistent" in this
case has slightly different definitions depending on what is required.
Sometimes there is a requirement that the URI can always be dereferenced as
a URL, other times the only requirement is that it is not used as an
identifier for another item (a timestamp in the URI itself is normally
sufficient to guarantee that). Sometimes there is a requirement that the
entity issuing the URI can reasonably guarantee that they will continue to
control the domain, and hence the right to issue the URIs, which shouldn't
be an too difficult for a government body.
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