Hello everyone

This is the running update from the Executive Director. Have questions or comments? Suggest some added information or edits? Contact Colin at kantarainitiative dot org.

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As we begin what may turn out to be a history-making tumultuous first full week in November, I'm finding it quite calming and satisfying to reflect on the month just past.

Kantara's slew of announcements in September continued into October. Kantara's conformity assessment, assurance, approval and Trust Mark program continues to draw global recognition, largely reflected in the new members joining last month - Exostar, Mastercard International, Oxyliom Solutions from the EMEA and the US Federal Government's GSA. The latter's rejoining provided a useful platform to launch a regular call cadence amongst representatives from the Australian, NZ and US agency members of Kantara that operate government-run digital identity services. Such indicators, along with the recent Kantara - SAFE Identity press announcement to cross-recognize each other's Trust Marks at full service equivalency for new approvals going forward, are early signs of maturation of the digital identity ecosystem and hopefully the sunset on the 'gold rush' phase that has thwarted it in recent years.

The supreme (largely volunteer) efforts of the Identity Assurance Working Group to develop the assessment criteria as well as the Assurance Review Board that govern the scheme, are both foundational to the operation of the the Trust Framework and deserve a special mention here. It was great to see the successful All-Member-Ballot approving the 63C and level 3's of the Kantara NIST SP 800-63-3 criteria (IAF Major Release) with the support of ID.me that underwrote the costs of the technical editor. Kantara's community oriented, transparent and cost-free Work & Discussion Groups - Identity Assurance, Health Identity Assurance, Privacy & Identity mDL to support ISO 18013-5, Federation Federated Identifiers for Resilient Ecosystems (FIRE), Federation Interop, Information Sharing Interop and UMA - all play, beyond the great outputs they achieve in their own right (here's a great recent example from the FIRE WG - Mobile Authentication Assurance Statement), an important role as feeders into Kantara's Trust scheme. And behind the Work & Discussion Groups, stands the grant funding vehicles of the Kantara Foundation and Kantara Europe to seek and operate Applied R&D projects.

Looking forward to this month, November, members will see emails on various matters as we prepare for 2021, starting with a heads-up on what's to come. The Annual General Meeting is coming up at the end of the month where President Matt will share the strategy work that the Board has been focussed on in recent months to seek your feedback, and the Work and Discussion Group Chairs will share the results of their efforts and work plans for next year. There will be a call for nominations for the two Directors at Large positions for 2021 from the general organization membership, and a sneak peek at a new 'view' of our membership, spread across the world as it is. Finally, there's a reward for members' support this year with complimentary VIP Guest Passes to an upcoming event.

Speaking of members' support, thank you so much to the following organizations and individuals that have renewed recently: GakuNin (Japan), Easy Dynamics Corp (USA), Airside (USA) and Individual Contributors Lorrayne Auld, Ian Glazer, and Sal D'Agostino.

For me personally too, November is busy, as the 2020 (now virtual) conference season draws to a close. I will be a panelist at Think Digital Identity for Government and moderator and multiple panelist at Identity Week. Never being one to hold back what I really think on digital identity related topics, please join the fun at these events!

Onwards!

Kind regards,

Colin

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