Veterinary surgeon in GB
What this register publishes today, what is missing, and the smallest change that would move it up.
What was found
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.
What it publishes
| Check | Answer | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| A public page per licence | Yes | Gives a reader something to look at and a checker something to archive and attest against. |
| A bulk export | No | Lets a consumer hold the whole list instead of fetching one licence at a time, and lets anyone hash it. |
| Machine readable | No | A CSV or JSON rather than a page built for a browser. Decides whether checking can be automated at all. |
| Signed | No | Makes the file impossible to forge or mirror convincingly. Nothing reaches grade A without it. |
The next step
Give every licence a stable address
The register exists but lives behind a search form, so there is nothing to link to, nothing to archive and nothing to attest against. A permanent address per licence costs little and moves this row to grade C on its own.
A grade describes a register, not the authority behind it and not the quality of its supervision. An authority can run an excellent register and still sit at grade D because it is a search form.
If this row is wrong, it gets corrected with the correction published beside it. The index is useful only if it can be argued with. Tell the lab.