{ "name": "Revow register index", "description": "What credential registers publish, checked by hand against the authority’s own pages.", "licence": "CC0-1.0", "url": "https://revow.org/registers", "updated": "2026-11-10", "counts": { "total": 54, "publicPage": 50, "bulkExport": 16, "machineReadable": 20, "signed": 0 }, "registers": [ { "id": "au-qld-builder", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/au-qld-builder", "jurisdiction": "AU-QLD", "jurisdictionName": "Queensland, Australia", "trade": "Builder", "authority": "Queensland Building and Construction Commission", "source": "https://www.data.qld.gov.au/dataset/qbcc-licensed-contractors-register", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "A CSV on the state open data portal under CC-BY, described as active licensees at the date of publication. The gap is history: the commission declines to publish earlier versions, on the stated grounds that doing so risks publishing data that is no longer correct, and points anyone who wants them at a Right to Information application. So you can check a licence now and you cannot establish what the register said on the day the money moved, which is the only question that matters after a fraud." }, { "id": "ca-on-loan-broker", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/ca-on-loan-broker", "jurisdiction": "CA-ON", "jurisdictionName": "Ontario, Canada", "trade": "Loan broker", "authority": "Ontario Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery", "source": "https://data.ontario.ca/dataset/select-licence-and-registration-data", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "Monthly CSVs under the Open Government Licence carrying licence type, number, status and expiry, for individuals and for businesses, covering the money-handling trades specifically: collection agencies, consumer reporting agencies, lenders, loan brokers, bailiffs. The province’s own directive says data must be open unless there is good reason for it not to be. The dataset is nonetheless called Select Licence and Registration Data, and selected it is. Two catalogue copies of the same record disagree about whether it updates monthly or yearly, which tells you how much weight the cadence metadata carries." }, { "id": "ee-professional-certificate-holder", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/ee-professional-certificate-holder", "jurisdiction": "EE", "jurisdictionName": "Estonia", "trade": "Professional certificate holder", "authority": "Estonian Qualifications Authority", "source": "https://www.kutseregister.ee/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "Estonia has every component of grade A and still does not reach it, and the reason is exactly the distinction this lab keeps making. There is a register of professional certificates, over a hundred thousand of them, refreshed nightly, with holders’ names and identity codes validated against the population register, feeding the state portal where a citizen sees all their own certificates including expired ones, and connected to the economic activities register and the punishment register. Every message between those systems travels over the national data exchange layer, and every one of those messages is digitally signed and timestamped, with the logs admissible as court evidence. A citizen can be handed a signed .asice file by a public body and verify it on a laptop without a card reader. So the state signs the pipe between institutions and signs documents it issues to individuals, and still publishes no signed file of who holds what. Sign the artefact, not the channel: that sentence is the whole of RVW-5 and Estonia is the proof that the two are not the same thing." }, { "id": "gb-financial-adviser", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/gb-financial-adviser", "jurisdiction": "GB", "jurisdictionName": "United Kingdom", "trade": "Financial adviser", "authority": "Financial Conduct Authority", "source": "https://register.fca.org.uk/s/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "A free REST API over the register of authorised firms and individuals, self-serve after registration for a key, alongside a bulk extract service. One of the better regulators in the world to build against. No OpenAPI definition is published, so every client is written from the documentation by hand." }, { "id": "gb-enw-solicitor", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/gb-enw-solicitor", "jurisdiction": "GB-ENW", "jurisdictionName": "England and Wales", "trade": "Solicitor", "authority": "Solicitors Regulation Authority", "source": "https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/register/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "A data sharing web service refreshed every 24 hours, available by subscription with a key, carrying the firms the authority regulates. Individual solicitors remain a consumer search box: the thing a client actually wants to check, which is whether this named person is a solicitor, is the half that is not in the feed." }, { "id": "ie-insurance-intermediary", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/ie-insurance-intermediary", "jurisdiction": "IE", "jurisdictionName": "Ireland", "trade": "Insurance intermediary", "authority": "Central Bank of Ireland", "source": "https://registers.centralbank.ie/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The same country as the solicitors row and the opposite behaviour, which is worth seeing side by side. The central bank publishes individual registers for every financial service provider it regulates, as dated snapshots rather than a live query: a register as at a given date, across credit institutions, investment business firms, insurance distribution, mortgage credit intermediaries, with the investment intermediary registers generally updated every two weeks or sooner. The whole set is listed as a dataset on the national data catalogue. It also publishes something almost nobody else does: a register of unauthorised firms, naming firms it has issued warning notices about. A dated artefact plus a published blacklist is most of what RVW-5 asks for, arrived at independently, and still nothing is signed. The registers site itself carries the line that they are working to ensure the accuracy of all registers as quickly as possible." }, { "id": "it-registered-professional", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/it-registered-professional", "jurisdiction": "IT", "jurisdictionName": "Italy", "trade": "Registered professional", "authority": "Ministero delle Imprese e del Made in Italy", "source": "https://www.inipec.gov.it/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Partial", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The closest any state has come to legislating the thing this lab is building, twelve years before the lab existed. INI-PEC is a national index of digital domiciles, established by statute, holding the certified electronic address of every company in the business register and every professional enrolled in a professional order. The orders feed it directly. The address is not a contact detail: for an enrolled professional it is their legal digital domicile, and communications to it carry legal value. It is free, public, and searchable without any identity credential. The Digital Administration Code goes further and states that online consultation of the digital domicile registers is freely permitted, not subject to authentication, and that the lists are produced in open format. Swap the certified address for a key and most of RVW-2 is already law in one country. What is bound is an inbox rather than a signing key, and the lab has verified the statute and the free search rather than obtaining a complete extract." }, { "id": "kr-brokerage-office", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/kr-brokerage-office", "jurisdiction": "KR", "jurisdictionName": "South Korea", "trade": "Brokerage office", "authority": "Municipal and provincial authorities, via data.go.kr", "source": "https://www.data.go.kr/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-10", "finding": "Abundant and fragmented in the same breath. Seoul publishes its brokerage offices as a daily CSV of more than twenty-five thousand records under an open licence allowing commercial use and modification, carrying registration number, office name, trading name, status, and the start and end dates of administrative sanctions. Sanction dates inside the bulk file is something almost nobody else does. Provinces and districts publish their own REST APIs through the national portal, free, some of them real-time, behind a service key that is auto-approved for development and reviewed for production. The catch is that there are hundreds of these publishers and the cadence is whatever each one chose: daily in Seoul, annual in one district whose file carries 323 rows. One more thing is worth watching. Responding to the lease-deposit fraud wave, Seoul has said it intends to publish detailed business information about practising agents so that risky ones can be identified, and to do it with the agents’ consent. Consent-based enrichment of a public register, for fraud prevention, is tier C of RVW-5 arrived at independently." }, { "id": "nl-physiotherapist", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/nl-physiotherapist", "jurisdiction": "NL", "jurisdictionName": "Netherlands", "trade": "Physiotherapist", "authority": "CIBG, Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport", "source": "https://www.bigregister.nl/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "A statutory online public register covering eleven protected titles, among them doctor, dentist, pharmacist, psychotherapist and physiotherapist, with re-registration required every five years and more than three hundred and fifty thousand people on it. Unusually, the machine route is documented and openly licensed: the system-coupling entry sits on the national open data portal under CC0, and the published web services manual describes the interface down to the WSDL. Two limits. There is no file, so there is nothing to hash and nothing to sign, only a query. And the search returns valid registrations, with struck-off ones surfaced only in narrow circumstances, which is the revocation problem again." }, { "id": "no-building-contractor", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/no-building-contractor", "jurisdiction": "NO", "jurisdictionName": "Norway", "trade": "Building contractor", "authority": "Direktoratet for byggkvalitet", "source": "https://sgregister.dibk.no/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-10", "finding": "A free REST API over the register of centrally approved construction firms, listed in the national data catalogue, with no registration required and no key: the directorate states plainly that system owners do not need to register their usage. Each approved firm has a certificate page stating its approval, that the approval is valid only while the fee is paid, and that it shall be withdrawn on serious or repeated breaches of the building act. Two caveats matter. The scheme is voluntary, so absence from this register does not mean a firm is unlicensed, which is a different thing from every other row here. And the directorate asks users not to store the data permanently but to use the API for direct or regular lookups. That request is reasonable, it keeps answers fresh, and it is the opposite of what a durable proof needs: no copy, no provenance, and no way to show what the register said on the day of the contract." }, { "id": "nz-licensed-building-practitioner", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/nz-licensed-building-practitioner", "jurisdiction": "NZ", "jurisdictionName": "New Zealand", "trade": "Licensed building practitioner", "authority": "Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment", "source": "https://portal.api.business.govt.nz/api/lbp", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The best technical shape in this pass. A documented REST API on the government developer portal with a published definition that loads in Swagger, a sandbox to build against and a subscription key after approval. What is missing is a file, so there is nothing to hash and nothing to sign, and approval sits between an implementer and the data." }, { "id": "sg-real-estate-salesperson", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/sg-real-estate-salesperson", "jurisdiction": "SG", "jurisdictionName": "Singapore", "trade": "Real estate salesperson", "authority": "Council for Estate Agencies", "source": "https://data.gov.sg/datasets/d_07c63be0f37e6e59c07a4ddc2fd87fcb/view", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The best register in this index, and it is not close. Every valid salesperson since 2011 is published as a CSV of roughly thirty-eight thousand rows, refreshed three times a day at seven, eleven and five, served through a documented query API, under a licence that says free forever for personal or commercial use. The register itself goes further than the file: separate published lists of suspended and revoked salespersons and agencies, a consolidated record of enforcement actions on a rolling three-year basis, and the residential transactions each agent actually completed in the last thirty-six months. Revocation, history and transaction record, all public, by decision. The only thing it lacks is a signature." }, { "id": "us-ca-contractor", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/us-ca-contractor", "jurisdiction": "US-CA", "jurisdictionName": "California, United States", "trade": "Contractor", "authority": "California Contractors State License Board", "source": "https://www.cslb.ca.gov/OnlineServices/DataPortal/ContractorList", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-10", "finding": "A master list of every licensed contractor in the state, free, in CSV or Excel, split into three files: the licence master, workers’ compensation, and personnel. Each record carries licence number, business name, address, status, issue and expiry dates, classifications, bond and insurance. The personnel file is the interesting one, because it publishes the people attached to a licence rather than only the licence, which is the question a client is actually asking. Two limits are stated by the board itself: the data is current as of the date printed under the download link and status can change at any moment, and email addresses are withheld under the Business and Professions Code. The first of those is the freshness problem this lab writes specifications about, admitted in one line by the authority publishing the file." }, { "id": "us-ca-real-estate-broker", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/us-ca-real-estate-broker", "jurisdiction": "US-CA", "jurisdictionName": "California, United States", "trade": "Real estate broker", "authority": "California Department of Real Estate", "source": "https://dre.ca.gov/Licensees/ExamineeLicenseeListDataFiles.html", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Partial", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "Licensee list files are downloadable free of charge in Excel, with the columns defined in a published form, RE 776, which is more documentation than most registers offer. Excel is structured but it is not an interface: there is no query, no change feed and no way to ask what moved since yesterday without holding both files and diffing them yourself." }, { "id": "us-ca-registered-nurse", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/us-ca-registered-nurse", "jurisdiction": "US-CA", "jurisdictionName": "California, United States", "trade": "Registered nurse", "authority": "California Department of Consumer Affairs", "source": "https://www.dca.ca.gov/consumers/public_info", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "One folder per board, covering the professions the department regulates, from nursing and medicine to dentistry, accountancy, engineering and contracting, each refreshed at the start of the month against a published record layout carrying licence type, number, status and an individual-or-organisation flag. Monthly is far better than nothing and slower than a licence can change: a suspension on the second of the month is invisible in the file for four weeks." }, { "id": "us-fl-real-estate-sales-associate", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/us-fl-real-estate-sales-associate", "jurisdiction": "US-FL", "jurisdictionName": "Florida, United States", "trade": "Real estate sales associate", "authority": "Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation", "source": "https://www2.myfloridalicense.com/real-estate-commission/public-records/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "Weekly CSV downloads with published column layouts, split by county, covering sales associates, brokers, corporations and branch offices, and the same arrangement runs across the department’s other boards: construction and electrical, accountancy, auctioneers, asbestos, talent agencies. Two things are worth knowing before you build on it. The downloads leave out void, delinquent and involuntarily inactive records, so the file cannot tell you that a licence was revoked, only that it is absent. And one of the department’s own download pages still warns that Internet Explorer 11 may be required to fetch the files." }, { "id": "us-ny-real-estate-salesperson", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/us-ny-real-estate-salesperson", "jurisdiction": "US-NY", "jurisdictionName": "New York, United States", "trade": "Real estate salesperson", "authority": "New York State Department of State, Division of Licensing Services", "source": "https://data.ny.gov/d/yg7h-zjbf", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-10", "finding": "The file exists and it is not on the register’s website. Active salesperson and broker licences are published as a dataset on the state’s general open data portal, in CSV, JSON and XML, each at a fixed download address, dated and updated. The licensing division runs thirty-five occupations and the real estate one is simply one more table among the state’s public data. That route matters more than it looks: the export was not won from the regulator as a service, it arrived because an open data policy applies to state agencies, and the same policy covers appraisers and the rest. An authority that already publishes under such a policy is one DNS record and one signature away from tier A, and nobody has to build it an API first." }, { "id": "us-tx-electrical-contractor", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/us-tx-electrical-contractor", "jurisdiction": "US-TX", "jurisdictionName": "Texas, United States", "trade": "Electrical contractor", "authority": "Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation", "source": "https://www.tdlr.texas.gov/LicenseSearch/licfile.asp", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "B", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The best shape found in this pass. TDLR publishes a CSV per licensing programme, updated every day, plus an all-licences file of around 180 MB covering every programme it runs. No key, no account, no request and no project: the files sit at a stable address and anyone may take them. Tier A of RVW-5 describes what this authority already does." }, { "id": "ae-dxb-real-estate-broker", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/ae-dxb-real-estate-broker", "jurisdiction": "AE-DXB", "jurisdictionName": "Dubai, United Arab Emirates", "trade": "Real estate broker", "authority": "Dubai Land Department", "source": "https://dubailand.gov.ae/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "Gated", "signed": "No", "grade": "C", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The jurisdiction that has gone furthest on the thing this lab is actually trying to do, by regulation rather than by protocol. Every broker carries a registration number and every brokerage an office number, both verifiable on the spot through the land department’s own service. More to the point, every legal property advertisement must carry a permit number issued by the regulator, with a scannable code that checks the advert against the registry, and the penalties are real: a fine per listing for both broker and agency, suspension of the broker number on a second offence, permanent cancellation for repeat offenders. The listing is bound to a licensed person and the binding is enforced. What is missing is the part that would make it portable: there is no open file, the machine route sits behind a gateway registration, and the proof lives inside one authority’s app rather than in an artefact anyone can check for themselves." }, { "id": "au-medical-practitioner", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/au-medical-practitioner", "jurisdiction": "AU", "jurisdictionName": "Australia", "trade": "Medical practitioner", "authority": "Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency", "source": "https://www.ahpra.gov.au/Registration/Employer-Services/Practitioner-information-exchange.aspx", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Gated", "machineReadable": "Gated", "signed": "No", "grade": "C", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The clearest example in the index of machine readability priced out of reach. The public register covers every registered health practitioner in the country across fifteen professions and refreshes roughly every fifteen minutes. The programmatic route is a subscription service returning XML, with a one-off connection fee of $4,000 and $1,000 a year after that, refreshed every 24 hours. The paid feed is slower than the free page. A full copy of a register is released only where the requester can show it is in the public interest." }, { "id": "au-nsw-home-building-contractor", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/au-nsw-home-building-contractor", "jurisdiction": "AU-NSW", "jurisdictionName": "New South Wales, Australia", "trade": "Home building contractor", "authority": "NSW Fair Trading", "source": "https://data.nsw.gov.au/data/dataset/home-building-licensing", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Partial", "signed": "No", "grade": "C", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The public register is unusually good on substance: it carries current and historical licence records, the category of work, public warnings and finalised disciplinary action, which is more than most registers will say out loud. The published extract is the weak half. It sits on the state open data portal under Creative Commons Attribution with its update frequency recorded as annual." }, { "id": "au-nsw-real-estate-agent", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/au-nsw-real-estate-agent", "jurisdiction": "AU-NSW", "jurisdictionName": "New South Wales, Australia", "trade": "Real estate agent", "authority": "NSW Fair Trading", "source": "https://data.nsw.gov.au/data/dataset/home-building-licensing", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Partial", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "C", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "Property licences appear in the same published set as home building. The individual extract is a spreadsheet; the corporation extract is published as a PDF. A current licence extract in PDF is machine readable in name only, and the gap between those two formats is the whole argument of RVW-5 in a single dataset." }, { "id": "au-qld-pool-safety-inspector", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/au-qld-pool-safety-inspector", "jurisdiction": "AU-QLD", "jurisdictionName": "Queensland, Australia", "trade": "Pool safety inspector", "authority": "Queensland Building and Construction Commission", "source": "https://data.qld.gov.au/dataset/poolsafetyregister", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "C", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The same portal and the same shape as the contractor register, with a proper data dictionary covering licence number, name, business address, grade and class. At the time of checking the portal recorded the data as last updated in September 2024. A file at a stable address that nobody refreshes is worse than no file, because it reads as current." }, { "id": "au-vic-building-practitioner", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/au-vic-building-practitioner", "jurisdiction": "AU-VIC", "jurisdictionName": "Victoria, Australia", "trade": "Building practitioner", "authority": "Victorian Building Authority", "source": "https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/dataset/building-practitioner-register", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Yes", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "C", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "A CSV served from a stable address through the state portal, which is exactly the right mechanism, published with its last-updated date recorded as unknown, which is exactly the wrong metadata. A file whose age cannot be established cannot carry weight in a dispute, however good the contents are." }, { "id": "eu-statutory-auditor", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/eu-statutory-auditor", "jurisdiction": "EU", "jurisdictionName": "European Union", "trade": "Statutory auditor", "authority": "Audit Directive 2006/43/EC and national competent authorities", "source": "https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2006/43/oj/eng", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "Mandated", "signed": "No", "grade": "C", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "This row is a legal floor rather than one authority, and it is the strongest evidence in the index that the ask is not unreasonable. Since 2006, and operational across the union since June 2009, every member state must enter approved auditors and audit firms in a public register. The directive goes further than most national registers manage on their own: each auditor and firm must be identified by an individual number, registration information must be stored electronically and be electronically accessible to the public, the register must be updated without undue delay after notification, third-country auditors must be flagged as such rather than shown as statutory auditors, and sanctions must be disclosed publicly with withdrawal of approval among them. The stated reason, in the recitals, is to protect third parties. The directive even contemplates electronic signatures, but on the information the auditor submits to the authority, not on what the authority publishes. One trade, twenty-seven countries, tiers A and B of RVW-5 in all but the signature, legislated seventeen years before this lab wrote them down." }, { "id": "fr-agent-immobilier", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/fr-agent-immobilier", "jurisdiction": "FR", "jurisdictionName": "France", "trade": "Agent immobilier", "authority": "CCI France", "source": "https://www.professionnels-immobilier.cci.fr/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "C", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "Worth recording because the common assumption is wrong. France does have a national public file of carte professionnelle holders: a 2015 decree created it, put CCI France in charge of running it and set out what the public may see, after the card moved from the prefectures to the chambers of commerce. It is public and consultable. There is no export and no interface, and the card runs three years, so a public page is the whole of what an implementer gets." }, { "id": "fr-notaire", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/fr-notaire", "jurisdiction": "FR", "jurisdictionName": "France", "trade": "Notaire", "authority": "Conseil supérieur du notariat", "source": "https://www.notaires.fr/fr/annuaire-notaires", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Partial", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "C", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "Two details make this worth reading even if you never touch French property. First, the national directory is not a courtesy: a decree requires the council’s bureau to draw it up, keep it current and publish it on its website, and if it fails at any of those three the Minister of Justice may order it to comply. A published register with a ministerial backstop for not publishing is rarer than it sounds, and some of the office data reaches the national open data portal. Second, and more interesting for this lab: France already runs a database of notaries’ signatures. It exists so that apostilles and legalisations can be issued, within three working days of the necessary information appearing in that base. A state that already maintains a signature register for its public officers is not being asked for a new idea when it is asked to publish keys. It is being asked to point the idea at the public." }, { "id": "gb-architect", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/gb-architect", "jurisdiction": "GB", "jurisdictionName": "United Kingdom", "trade": "Architect", "authority": "Architects Registration Board", "source": "https://architects-register.org.uk/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Paid", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "C", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The clearest case in the index of a statutory register sold back to the public. Anyone may search the register free, and a copy of the whole register is a purchase: a paid PDF download behind a link that expires, after which you buy it again. The board’s own publication scheme lists the website and the purchase download as two separate things. Both open data entries for this register are dead, one with no link to any data at all and the other last touched in 2013." }, { "id": "gb-medical-practitioner", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/gb-medical-practitioner", "jurisdiction": "GB", "jurisdictionName": "United Kingdom", "trade": "Medical practitioner", "authority": "General Medical Council", "source": "https://www.gmc-uk.org/registration-and-licensing/our-registers/download-the-register", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Paid", "machineReadable": "Yes", "signed": "No", "grade": "C", "checked": "2026-11-10", "finding": "The clearest priced gate in the index. Anyone may search the register of more than two hundred and seventy thousand doctors for free, and the GMC describes it as the only up-to-date publicly accessible database of everyone eligible to practise in the UK. The bulk file exists in exactly the shape RVW-5 asks for: the full register daily, delta files seven days a week, CSV over SFTP. It costs eight hundred and fifteen pounds a year plus VAT, and republishing any of it needs a second licence granted after the GMC has understood what you plan to do with it. Nothing technical is missing here. A register first printed as a book in 1859 now ships a daily machine-readable diff, and the only thing between it and tier A is a price list and a permission step." }, { "id": "jp-real-estate-business-operator", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/jp-real-estate-business-operator", "jurisdiction": "JP", "jurisdictionName": "Japan", "trade": "Real estate business operator", "authority": "Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism", "source": "https://etsuran2.mlit.go.jp/TAKKEN/takkenKensaku.do", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Partial", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "C", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "A picture of modernisation caught halfway. There is a national search system covering construction and real estate operators, published, in the ministry’s own words, so that consumers can choose operators appropriately, and it refreshes twice a month, which prefectures warn means a lag before reality shows up. The statutory broker register itself is still inspected in person: one prefecture gives an address, weekday hours of 9:00 to 11:30 and 13:00 to 16:45, and states that enquiries about brokers cannot be answered by telephone or through its contact form. Digital inspection arrived in 2025, for brokers who applied after April that year, through the ministry’s online system, requiring a government business ID account. Some prefectures publish a spreadsheet of their own licensees about once a quarter, with a note that anything after the base date is missing." }, { "id": "us-mortgage-loan-originator", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/us-mortgage-loan-originator", "jurisdiction": "US", "jurisdictionName": "United States", "trade": "Mortgage loan originator", "authority": "Conference of State Bank Supervisors, NMLS", "source": "https://www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "Gated", "machineReadable": "Gated", "signed": "No", "grade": "C", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The identifier problem is already solved here and the binding problem is not. Every state-licensed mortgage originator in the country carries one NMLS unique ID, the free public site is searchable by anyone, and a change made by a licensee or a regulator shows up the following business day. The machine route is a contracted B2B subscription: a weekly file set against a published specification, an executed contract with CSBS and an annual fee. Inactive licences stay visible for five years and are then dropped from both the site and the data set." }, { "id": "at-licensed-trade-business", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/at-licensed-trade-business", "jurisdiction": "AT", "jurisdictionName": "Austria", "trade": "Licensed trade business", "authority": "Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft, Energie und Tourismus", "source": "https://www.gisa.gv.at/abfrage", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "Interface", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-10", "finding": "The best equipped grade D in the index, and the direct answer to Germany one border away. Austria replaced fourteen separate provincial trade registers with one national system in March 2015, gave every trade licence a GISA number, and wrote free public access into the trade statute itself, so the query is open to anyone without a login and without a stated reason. For sole traders outside the company register it is the only authentic source there is. There is even a published interface specification, in two stages, with version numbers. What is missing is the file: no export, nothing to hash, nothing signed. Germany has the opposite problem and the same result. One country fixed the fragmentation and still did not publish; the other never fixed it. Neither professional can prove anything with a key." }, { "id": "au-migration-agent", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/au-migration-agent", "jurisdiction": "AU", "jurisdictionName": "Australia", "trade": "Migration agent", "authority": "Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority", "source": "https://portal.mara.gov.au/search-the-register-of-migration-agents/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The authority publishes a searchable register of every registered agent and calls it the only true source for finding one, and its own user guide tells applicants to be careful of unlawful persons pretending to be registered agents. That sentence is this lab’s entire problem statement, written by a government office, in a help document, for a trade where the victim is usually a migrant paying a stranger. There is no file and no interface behind it." }, { "id": "au-qld-real-estate-agent", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/au-qld-real-estate-agent", "jurisdiction": "AU-QLD", "jurisdictionName": "Queensland, Australia", "trade": "Real estate agent", "authority": "Office of Fair Trading Queensland", "source": "https://www.qld.gov.au/law/laws-regulated-industries-and-accountability/queensland-laws-and-regulations/regulated-industries-and-licensing/regulated-industries-licensing-and-legislation/property-industry-regulation/check-a-property-licence", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "A free public register of licensed agents, salespeople and corporations, searchable online, and nothing beyond it: no file, no interface, nothing to archive. The authoritative version is a formal record of search, which the office sends within ten working days. A property settlement does not wait ten working days, so in practice the check that counts arrives after the money has gone." }, { "id": "br-corretor-de-imoveis", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/br-corretor-de-imoveis", "jurisdiction": "BR", "jurisdictionName": "Brazil", "trade": "Corretor de imóveis", "authority": "Conselhos Regionais de Corretores de Imóveis", "source": "https://www.cofeci.gov.br/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-10", "finding": "A national statute and twenty-six regional registers plus the Federal District, each deciding its own applications, maintaining its own professional register and issuing its own cards and certificates. Nobody may work in the market without registration, and inspectors check that the registration number appears on the broker’s printed advertising, which is the same instinct as Dubai’s permit number arrived at independently and without a central check behind it. Verification means picking the right state council’s site and using its public consultation. The federal council has itself flagged the structural consequence: applicants must be checked for registrations at other regional councils to avoid duplicates and protect the integrity of the national record. One profession, one law, twenty-seven identifiers. Recorded here from the councils’ own published material; the individual state portals have not yet been checked one by one." }, { "id": "ca-bc-real-estate-licensee", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/ca-bc-real-estate-licensee", "jurisdiction": "CA-BC", "jurisdictionName": "British Columbia, Canada", "trade": "Real estate licensee", "authority": "BC Financial Services Authority", "source": "https://www.bcfsa.ca/public-resources/real-estate/find-professional", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The sharpest sentence found in this entire index belongs to the regulator, about its own search: this is an unofficial search. It shows only the current licence period, not the licensing history, and anyone needing an official answer is told to telephone or email. The same authority runs a consumer fraud campaign telling the public to search before they sign, pointing at the search it has labelled unofficial. Meanwhile it has agreed to give a regional realtor association on-demand access to its licensing data in exchange for transaction data. The industry body gets a feed. The public gets a form and a disclaimer." }, { "id": "de-lawyer", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/de-lawyer", "jurisdiction": "DE", "jurisdictionName": "Germany", "trade": "Lawyer", "authority": "Bundesrechtsanwaltskammer", "source": "https://www.rechtsanwaltsregister.org", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-10", "finding": "Germany gave every lawyer a signing key and a national identifier, and still publishes no file. The national official directory is free to inspect for anyone, by statute, with an electronic search system the law explicitly requires. Each lawyer carries a SAFE identifier inside the judiciary’s electronic communication infrastructure, and a chip card holding a signature certificate used to file with courts. The directory is not advisory: courts and prosecutors are required by criminal procedure law to use it when appointing defence counsel. So the state has already decided that this register is authoritative enough to bind a court, and has already issued the cryptography. It just points both at the channel rather than at an artefact. This is the Estonian finding again, in a country with a completely different administration, which is the reason it belongs in the index twice." }, { "id": "dk-ejendomsmaegler", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/dk-ejendomsmaegler", "jurisdiction": "DK", "jurisdictionName": "Denmark", "trade": "Ejendomsmægler", "authority": "Erhvervsstyrelsen", "source": "https://ejendomsmaeglerregistret.dk/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-10", "finding": "Denmark legislated the argument of RVW-6 and did it quietly. The business authority keeps a statutory public register of approved estate agents, and the title itself is protected: only an approved person may use it, or anything that could be confused with it. The part worth borrowing is what happens at the end. The law used to say a person was deleted from the register. It was amended so that the approval is instead registered as deposited, lapsed, withdrawn or revoked. Someone noticed that erasing a person destroys the only record that answers the question a disputed transaction actually asks, which is not whether they are approved now but what the register said then, and why it stopped. Denmark also routes impersonation towards prosecution: where the disciplinary board finds the title used without entitlement, it passes the file to the authority to consider a police report." }, { "id": "es-agente-inmobiliario", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/es-agente-inmobiliario", "jurisdiction": "ES", "jurisdictionName": "Spain", "trade": "Agente inmobiliario", "authority": "Autonomous communities", "source": "https://habitatge.gencat.cat/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "There is no national register. Each autonomous community decides for itself, and they decided at different times and in different directions: Catalonia created the first one, the Basque Country, Madrid, Navarre and the Canaries followed, and Madrid has been moving to make registration mandatory rather than voluntary, which the sector describes as closing one of the last large pockets of unregulated property activity in the country. Cross-border inside Spain is handled by asking an agent operating in another community to declare a physical address and prove registration in an equivalent register elsewhere, which is mutual recognition by paperwork. The number worth remembering is from Catalonia: six months after its mandatory register opened, 34.2 per cent of the region’s agents had signed up." }, { "id": "fr-intermediaire-en-assurance", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/fr-intermediaire-en-assurance", "jurisdiction": "FR", "jurisdictionName": "France", "trade": "Intermédiaire en assurance", "authority": "ORIAS", "source": "https://www.orias.fr/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "Worth recording for one phrase in the statute. The insurance code requires intermediaries to be entered on a single register which is, in its own words, freely accessible to the public. That register covers insurance intermediaries, banking and payment services intermediaries, financial investment advisers, tied agents and crowdfunding intermediaries, tens of thousands of them, and it is kept not by a ministry but by a private body governed by the sectors themselves with a government commissioner sitting alongside, under Treasury supervision. Registration is compulsory and has to be renewed every year, which bounds how stale an entry can be. Consultation is free to everyone. There is no export and no interface, but a statute that already says freely accessible to the public is the easiest place in the world to argue that a file is owed." }, { "id": "gb-gas-installer", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/gb-gas-installer", "jurisdiction": "GB", "jurisdictionName": "United Kingdom", "trade": "Gas installer", "authority": "Gas Safe Register", "source": "https://www.gassaferegister.co.uk/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "A statutory register run by a private operator, with a public check by engineer number, business or postcode, and no published feed of any kind for anyone else to use. There is a second problem underneath that one: the engineer identity number changes every year with the new card. An identifier that rotates annually cannot be what a durable proof points at, which is the argument for binding a licence to a key that does not." }, { "id": "gb-security-operative", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/gb-security-operative", "jurisdiction": "GB", "jurisdictionName": "United Kingdom", "trade": "Security operative", "authority": "Security Industry Authority", "source": "https://services.sia.homeoffice.gov.uk/PublicRegister", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "A free public register, open 24 hours and with no login, which the regulator itself says is the definitive check rather than the card in somebody’s hand. Two problems. To search without the sixteen-digit licence number you must supply the person’s surname together with personal details such as date of birth, so checking a credential requires holding information about the person that a checker has no business needing. And the open data entry for this register was last updated in 2016." }, { "id": "gb-teacher", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/gb-teacher", "jurisdiction": "GB", "jurisdictionName": "United Kingdom", "trade": "Teacher", "authority": "Teaching Regulation Agency", "source": "https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-a-teachers-record", "publicPage": "Employers", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The index’s one inversion, and it is instructive. A parent cannot check whether the person teaching their child holds qualified teacher status. The record service is for schools, colleges and supply agencies, reached through a government sign-in account, and the employer must confirm the individual’s identity and hold their teacher reference number and date of birth before searching. What is public is the opposite half: prohibition decisions are published and prohibited names appear on a published list. So the sanction is open and the credential is closed, which is the reverse of every other row here. The department has also wrestled publicly with the consequence: it pulled the children’s barred list out of the teacher record because users could see every record carrying an alert, and has said it does not want employers relying on that list as a credential check." }, { "id": "gb-veterinary-surgeon", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/gb-veterinary-surgeon", "jurisdiction": "GB", "jurisdictionName": "United Kingdom", "trade": "Veterinary surgeon", "authority": "Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons", "source": "https://www.rcvs.org.uk/checkregister", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The college is required by law to keep the register and keeps it as a database, free to search on the website and updated daily, which is better than most. Nothing else is published: no export, no interface, and anything in the membership database beyond the register entry is withheld without the member’s permission, which is a defensible position and still leaves a checker with one answer at a time. One episode is worth recording because it is the failure nobody plans for: during a systems change the college had to announce that its online searches had not been updated for some weeks. A register that is down tells you it is down. A register that is silently stale does not." }, { "id": "gb-sct-solicitor", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/gb-sct-solicitor", "jurisdiction": "GB-SCT", "jurisdictionName": "Scotland", "trade": "Solicitor", "authority": "Law Society of Scotland", "source": "https://lawscot.org.uk/find-a-solicitor/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The closest thing in the index to the shape this lab is after, built without any of the machinery. A Scottish solicitor carries a society ID card and a five-digit solicitor number, and anyone, organisation or member of the public, can put that number into a status check and be told whether the person is currently entitled to practise. Stop practising and the card must go back and the check turns to not entitled to practise, so revocation actually surfaces. What it lacks is everything that would make the answer portable: no file, no export, a bot challenge on the search, and a result you cannot keep, show to a third party, or verify a week later." }, { "id": "hk-estate-agency-licensee", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/hk-estate-agency-licensee", "jurisdiction": "HK", "jurisdictionName": "Hong Kong", "trade": "Estate agency licensee", "authority": "Estate Agents Authority", "source": "https://www.eaa.org.hk/en-us/Licence-list", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The third jurisdiction in this index where the register that counts is a room. Section 13 of the ordinance requires the authority to maintain a Register holding names, licence numbers and, for current licensees, the registered address, and that Register is open free of charge for public inspection at the authority’s office in Wanchai, with certified extracts available. The online Licence List states plainly that it is not that Register, that the information obtained should not be used for any other purpose, and that anyone wanting registered addresses or the historical periods of a licence should come and search in the office. One detail is worth borrowing: the ordinance separately requires every licensee to hold an address in Hong Kong to which all communications and notices may be sent. A mandatory address for service is the same idea as a digital domicile, built out of paper." }, { "id": "ie-gas-installer", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/ie-gas-installer", "jurisdiction": "IE", "jurisdictionName": "Ireland", "trade": "Gas installer", "authority": "Commission for Regulation of Utilities", "source": "https://www.rgii.ie/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-10", "finding": "The best real-world evidence in the index that impersonation is the actual problem. Gas work for domestic customers is a criminal offence unless you are on this register, the public can search it by county, and every registered installer carries an ID card showing name, code, validity date and photograph. What makes the row worth reading is the enforcement record. The regulator has prosecuted people for carrying out illegal gas works while falsely claiming to be registered, including one man whose claim was disproved by a records check, and, most pointedly, a former registered installer who went on claiming registration after his had been terminated. That case is the revocation problem in a courtroom: the credential was real, then it was not, and the only thing standing between the public and the lie was somebody thinking to check. A card with a photograph is a good answer to impersonation in a doorway and no answer at all over email." }, { "id": "ie-solicitor", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/ie-solicitor", "jurisdiction": "IE", "jurisdictionName": "Ireland", "trade": "Solicitor", "authority": "Law Society of Ireland", "source": "https://www.lawsociety.ie/Solicitors-Search", "publicPage": "Directory", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The statutory register exists and you cannot read it from where you are sitting. The Law Society maintains the register of practising solicitors under the Solicitors Act 1954, and that register may be inspected at the Society’s premises in Dublin during office hours. What is online is a directory, updated daily and useful, which states in its own disclaimer that it should not be regarded as a comprehensive list of practising solicitors or of all solicitors, and that it is provided for information purposes only. Disciplinary findings are a third thing again: a statutory register of misconduct orders, copies of which are obtained by writing to the regulation department. The Society has also had to post a notice that an AI search tool is generating inaccurate information about disciplinary findings against solicitors, which is what happens when the authoritative record is the hardest of the three to reach." }, { "id": "in-mh-real-estate-agent", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/in-mh-real-estate-agent", "jurisdiction": "IN-MH", "jurisdictionName": "Maharashtra, India", "trade": "Real estate agent", "authority": "Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority", "source": "https://maharera.maharashtra.gov.in", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-10", "finding": "One national statute, more than thirty separate registers. Registration is compulsory under section 9 of the 2016 Act for anyone who facilitates a sale, and each state and union territory runs its own authority, portal, fees and process, so a national check does not exist and an agent operating across a border is a different lookup each time. Maharashtra is the largest and the most useful to read. It has registered more than fifty thousand agents in eight years, and publishes that fewer than thirty-two thousand of those are currently active: more than a third of all registrations have lapsed or were never completed. That is a register publishing its own decay rate, which is the single most honest number in this index and the reason RVW-6 exists. The federal split is now the commonest failure in the table, shared with Brazil, Spain, India and the United States." }, { "id": "ph-real-estate-broker", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/ph-real-estate-broker", "jurisdiction": "PH", "jurisdictionName": "Philippines", "trade": "Real estate broker", "authority": "Professional Regulation Commission", "source": "https://verification.prc.gov.ph", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-10", "finding": "The law already demands most of a claim document. The Real Estate Service Act makes practising without registration and a valid identification card an offence, and separately requires a practitioner to put their registration and licence details on every document they sign, use or issue in connection with their practice. That is the subject, the trade, the licence reference and the issuing body, mandated by statute, on every piece of paper. What is published to check it against is a free search form, by name or by number, which the Commission itself hedges with a warning that human or mechanical error and delays in updating remain possible. The regulator’s own framing is the sharpest sentence found in this pass: the card can be perfectly genuine and the registration still lapsed, because the card is not the licence, the registry is. Which is precisely why the registry has to be publishable as something a machine can keep." }, { "id": "se-estate-agent", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/se-estate-agent", "jurisdiction": "SE", "jurisdictionName": "Sweden", "trade": "Estate agent", "authority": "Fastighetsmäklarinspektionen", "source": "https://fmi.se/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The best statutory language in the index on the question Queensland refuses. The ordinance requires the inspectorate to keep the estate agent register by automated processing, and states that its purposes include supervision and information to the public about agents who are, or have been, registered. Past registration is not an awkward disclosure to be avoided; it is a stated purpose of the register. Around seven and a half thousand agents are registered, the search is free, registration is required in order to work at all, and the inspectorate has run a sweep of every agent in the country against police and enforcement records, after which several lost their registration. No file and no interface, but the hardest argument, that history belongs in the record, was settled here by regulation." }, { "id": "za-property-practitioner", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/za-property-practitioner", "jurisdiction": "ZA", "jurisdictionName": "South Africa", "trade": "Property practitioner", "authority": "Property Practitioners Regulatory Authority", "source": "https://www.theppra.org.za/", "publicPage": "Yes", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "D", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The one register in the index whose whole purpose is the money. No one may act as a property practitioner without a valid fidelity fund certificate, and a practitioner without one has no right to commission and may have to repay what they took. Verification is a search by name, by a seven-digit reference or by firm number, and the certificate itself must be produced on request. What makes it worth reading is the authority’s own consumer advisory: check the practitioner is registered, check the firm is registered, check the firm has an active trust account at a registered South African bank, and check the money is going into that trust account and not a private one. The regulator can confirm the first three. The fourth, which is the one the fraud turns on, it cannot confirm at all." }, { "id": "de-licensed-trade-business", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/de-licensed-trade-business", "jurisdiction": "DE", "jurisdictionName": "Germany", "trade": "Licensed trade business", "authority": "Handwerkskammern", "source": "https://www.service-bw.de/", "publicPage": "No", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "E", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "Germany registers more of its tradespeople than almost anywhere and lets the public check almost none of them. Every business in a licensed or licence-free trade is a compulsory member of its regional chamber and entered in the Handwerksrolle, and running a licensed trade without that entry is punishable by a fine or a trade prohibition. There is no single national lookup, because each of the regional chambers keeps its own. At least one chamber’s published service description states plainly that direct online enquiries are not possible, that single enquiries are answered by telephone, and that the enquirer must show a legitimate interest, offering the example of deciding whether to include a business in a tender. A consumer about to hand over a deposit is not obviously such an interest." }, { "id": "pl-estate-agent", "url": "https://revow.org/registers/pl-estate-agent", "jurisdiction": "PL", "jurisdictionName": "Poland", "trade": "Estate agent", "authority": "None since 2014", "source": "https://www.gov.pl/", "publicPage": "No", "bulkExport": "No", "machineReadable": "No", "signed": "No", "grade": "E", "checked": "2026-11-09", "finding": "The only entry in the index that records a register being deleted, which makes it the closest thing anyone has to a controlled experiment. On 1 January 2014 the central registers of estate agents and property managers lost legal force and were closed by operation of law, pending licence applications were discontinued, and every requirement went with them: the licence, the clean criminal record, the relevant education, the supervised placement. Professional liability was removed too, leaving an agent answerable only in court. What survived in statute is compulsory liability insurance. Industry federations immediately launched their own competing voluntary registers, one of them publishing the insurer’s name and the sum insured. The state is now moving the other way: a central register of property managers run by the minister, with entry required in order to practise, on the stated ground that deregulation in property produced negative effects, and similar requirements are being considered for agents. Twelve years is long enough to see what a missing public record costs." } ] }