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Understanding ORUK governance and release cycles

An overview of how the Open Referral UK (ORUK) standard is governed, how new versions are released, and how this process benefits you.

How the standard is governed

Open Referral UK is a ‘profile’ of the full international Open Referral standard, as defined by the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS).

ORUK comes under the international governance process, documented in the Specification Governance. The process is designed to be open, transparent and representing the full community of users.

The UK community has representatives on Open Referral’s Technical Committee which is responsible for reviewing and approving all version changes.

How ORUK is versioned

Open Referral’s Versioning and Upgrade Process uses Semantic Versioning to manage major versions, minor versions and patches.

Version 1 (2021)

Version 1 of ORUK was released in 2021 with extensions to the core international standard.

In consultation with international colleagues, successful UK extensions were built into the international standard (version 3.0) in June 2022. This resulted in some renaming of fields for consistency.

Version 3 (current)

Version 3.0 is the latest UK version.

A UK profile of version 3.0 was published in 2023. The profile contains the fields and web methods from the full international standard that are relevant to the UK.

International minor versions 3.1 (October 2024) and 3.1.1 (December 2024) have been released since. UK profiles of these versions can be released if we identify a need for these changes in the UK.

The flexibility of the ‘profile’ mechanism means the UK community can choose if and when to adopt changes from the international standard. This allows for a more controlled evolution of the UK standard - it can stay relevant without being forced to adopt every international change.

Our release cycles

As a general guide, you can expect:

  • One minor version release each year, which is backwards-compatible
  • One major version release every five years

Our development cycle is based on a balance between the demand for upgrades and the capacity to do the work.

Ideally, significant demands for new features are met with the necessary resources to properly research, develop, and deploy them.

The UK validator, directory and dashboard of feeds are intended to support version 1, version 3 and all future versions indefinitely, providing long-term stability for users.

We do not expect any structural changes in the future to be as significant as the shift from version 1 and version 3.

On this page

  1. How the standard is governed
  2. How ORUK is versioned
  3. Our release cycles
Updated:25/09/2025
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