Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA) credential

Overview

Hospitality staff receive an RSA credential from an approved training provider. Venues verify the credential before onboarding staff, rostering shifts, or assigning alcohol service duties.

The venue does not need to inspect screenshots or paper certificates. It needs a trusted result that the worker holds current RSA training accepted for the role.

Why it matters

RSA compliance is often checked via paper certificates, screenshots, or manual record lookup. That creates inconsistent evidence, weak audit trails, and extra onboarding work for venues and workers.

Verifiable Credentials create a cleaner model:

• approved training providers issue tamper-evident RSA credentials
• workers store credentials in a wallet and present them when needed
• venues verify issuer trust and current status before assigning duties
• audit records capture the decision without retaining unnecessary training documents

Ecosystem roles

• Issuer: Approved training provider issuing RSA credentials.
• Holder: Hospitality worker storing the credential in a wallet.
• Verifier: Venue, employer, labour hire provider, or regulator checking eligibility.
• Trust governance: The rules that define approved issuers, credential format, status checks, expiry, and renewal.

Trust decision

The verifier decision is narrow: can this worker perform alcohol service duties for this venue right now?

That decision depends on accepted issuer, credential status, jurisdiction, expiry, and any venue-specific policy.

Privacy and assurance

The verifier should request only the RSA proof needed for the role. It should not need unrelated identity or employment details unless required by a separate onboarding process.

Assurance depends on checking issuer trust, credential status, expiry, and the worker’s binding to the presented credential.

Implementation notes

• Define jurisdiction-specific acceptance rules if RSA requirements differ across operating locations.
• Keep revocation and renewal status available for onboarding and roster checks.
• Use the same verification outcome across HR, rostering, and compliance records where possible.
• Provide exception handling for workers with older certificates or missing wallet access.

Objective

Confirm staff hold valid RSA training.

Description

Verify an RSA credential before assigning alcohol service duties.

Actors

Training provider; hospitality worker; venue, employer, labour hire provider, or regulator.

Dependencies

Approved issuer registry, RSA credential schema, verifier policy, and status endpoint.

Preconditions

The worker has completed approved RSA training and holds a current credential.

Postconditions

The worker is cleared, denied, or sent to exception handling for alcohol service duties.

flowchart LR
    TRAIN@{icon: "tabler:certificate", label: "Training provider", pos: "b"} -->|Issues RSA VC| WAL@{icon: "tabler:wallet", label: "Wallet", pos: "b"}
    WAL -->|Present RSA proof| VER@{icon: "tabler:glass-cocktail", label: "Venue / employer", pos: "b"}
    VER -->|Check status| REG@{icon: "tabler:book", label: "Registry/status", pos: "b"}

sequenceDiagram
    participant Trainer as Training provider
    participant Wallet
    participant Worker
    participant Verifier as Venue / employer
    participant Registry as Registry/status

    Trainer-->>Wallet: Issue RSA VC
    Worker->>Verifier: Apply for role or shift
    Verifier->>Wallet: Request RSA proof
    Wallet-->>Verifier: Present RSA proof
    Verifier->>Registry: Validate issuer and status
    Registry-->>Verifier: Valid
    Verifier-->>Worker: Cleared or denied