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Kantara's other major program, the Trust Framework and Assurance program, had a a busy and progressive year. Together with its Working Group steward the IAWG and its governance body the Assurance Review Board, the Service Assessment Criteria for NIST's SP 800-63-3 Digital Identity Guidelines were developed and deployed for Kantara's accredited assessors to review the compliance of identity and credential providers' services seeking Kantara's grant of Trust Mark upon systemic review and where favourable, approval. To this day, Kantara remains the only entity offering 3rd party conformity assessment and approval for this de jure internationally recognized standard, whose promulgation through the GSA FICAM program of which Kantara is an authorized Trust Framework Provider, has been thwarted significantly by federal funding cuts. Nonetheless the FICAM Trust Framework Provider community comprising InCommon, Kantara and SAFE-Biopharma have continued to operate the program for the benefit of the federal and state government without the support of the GSA. My sincere thanks and well deserved community credit goes out to the IAWG leads Ken Dagg, Scott Shorter and the Assurance Review Board comprising Ken Dagg (IAWG liaison), Tom Barton (InCommon), Jamie Bryce Clark (OASIS), Leif Johansson (SUNET), Richard Trevorah (tScheme), Nathan Faut and David Temoshok, upon whose weekly attendance and many hours of pre-meeting preparation the program depends, supported by Program Manager Ruth Puente and editor Richard Wilsher.
Mid-year Kantara absorbed the assets of the IDESG largely comprising the IDEF, the self attesting Registry, the wiki, website, committee artifacts and a small group of members and non member participants following the completion of the grant funding from NIST. While the transition into the newly established Kantara Initiative Educational Foundation operated almost seamlessly thanks in particular to the efforts of Kay Chopard Cohen, Martin Smith, Tom Jones and Kantara's Oliver Maerz, activity and forward progress has been less than anticipated, with IDESG's Healthcare Committee being the standout exception as it reformed inside Kantara's Health Identity Assurance working group under Dr Tom Sullivan's exemplary leadership, contributing matters of significant concern and importance to the community.
While on the subject of Kantara's working groups, the bulk of the activity gravitated around the Consent & Information Sharing and UMA groups. On reflection, perhaps this was not surprising given GDPR enforcement from May 25th, where both Consent Receipt v1.1 and UMA are specifications that play directly to the mitigation of these privacy and compliance risks while equally asserting the individual's sovereignty over their personal data and attributes. The development and demonstration of the interoperability potential of Kantara's Consent Receipt, and the proposed Licencing Model for UMA have piqued the interest of audiences around the globe. A special thanks the Group Leadership Jim Pasquale, John Wunderlich, Andrew Hughes, Eve Maler, Maciej Machulak respectively, along with the dedicated group of corporate members Consentua, digi.me, iWelcome, Open Consent Group, Trunomi, Ubisecure, and individual contributor volunteers Tim Reiniger, Catherine Shultern, Andi Hindle, Adrian Gropper, David Turner, Nancy Lush, Thomas, Cidgem, Domenico and the many others who supported by attending calls and contributing work. 2019 planning in these groups is well underway, while other whereby groups than that became less active over the year as their work completes will be wound up .
As reported last time, Kantara started the month in Brussels with the ISSE conference in concert with our key European Liaison EEMA. We hosted the Kantara hour that started with Mark Lizar (Open Consent Group) who presented "Operationalizing privacy, with security & surveillance". He was followed by Oscar Santolalla (Ubisecure) who demonstrated the Kantara Consent Receipt in action. To wrap it up, I presented another rendition of 'The rhythm of Kantara'. We had a pretty full room and a very engaged audience who, through their questions and discussions, caused us to run over our time allocation. https://twitter.com/osantolalla did some great follow ups.
Kantara staff worked quickly to launch and several new groups will be formed. Already formed a month ago is the ID Proofing and Verification Discussion Group which has enjoyed high call attendance and contributed use cases. This Group will collect Identity Proofing and Verification Use Cases from industry that will be contributed to ISO SC27 Working Group 5 Identity Management and Privacy. This Group has received fantastic interest, despite it's promotion only being days old. Thank you vendors and experts for expressing your intention to participate.
While on the topic of liaisons and Kantara's involvement with international committees, the twice yearly OECD meetings in our domain met in Paris where Kantara's engagement is via ITAC. I was unable to attend in person but was able to follow proceedings remotely the following week. These meetings cover future policy formation for Government in the domains of digital identity, privacy, AI, IoT and more generally the direction of the digital economy. Kantara members in good standing can read the outcomes of the OECD meetings or contribute more generally to Identity Management and Privacy standardization in SC27 WG5 if they join Kantara's Board sub-committee.
The final conference of the month was the Think.Digital Identity conference in London last Thursday. While this event is primarily targeted at the public sector, it offers interesting insights into the current state of digital identity in the UK. Kantara was a media partner for the event and Kantara members ForgeRock and Ubisecure supported the conference with sponsorship. Both members enjoyed podium time on panels as did Kantara. The highlight of this conference for me was seeing around 70% of the audience raise their hands in response to my question "Who has heard of Kantara?" It was a tribute to UK members, participants and Marketing's efforts on social media that Kantara's different ethos, open community and artefacts were so well known in this challenging market.
The month ended with a Tweet to officially announce success for Kantara Initiative, Europe in a consortium together with members and friends for a European H2020 grant funding project called NGI_TRUST . This is a perfect fit for the Kantara community of experts innovators and visionaries working on privacy and trust enhancing technologies for the Next Generation Internet. Look out for the first call for proposals in February 2019.
Look past December and into January 2019,
So there you have it. 2018 has seen Kantara improve its financial health, refine its membership and operating procedures, grow its membership, consolidate its work groups around focussed active interest areas, acquire other consortia assets and further develop both its programs.
I think we can be proud of what we have achieved through the support and dedication of members, non member participants, active Board organizations digi.me, Experian, ForgeRock (Kantara President Allan Foster), ISOC (Kantara Secretary, Treasurer Robin Wilton), SecureKey, Leadership Council Chair Andrew Hughes whose dedication to the cause is seemingly without bounds, my near 24x7 staff (Ruth and Oliver), Virtual Inc association management staff (Megan, Bella, Joan, Joe, Rob, Tim and Tom, Bob, Madison, Mikaela and others), and all without whom we could not have made 2018 the really solid progressive year that it has been.
2019 marks Kantara's 10th anniversary and you will see recognition of it throughout the year. That is some considerable feat in the highly volatile world of industry consortia!
As I look at the 12 months ahead, with the less-than-full knowledge I possess now, I see growth everywhere in every aspect of Kantara's activity - R&D and Assurance programs, Working Groups, consortia consolidation, asset acquisition, membership and sponsorship. As next year is likely to be my last full year as your Executive Director, I want it to be a landmark year for Kantara - not just because of its 10 years and it being my last year - but because I want to see all your enthusiasm, suggestions, introductions, and volunteer contributions come to fruition and receive the accolades they richly deserve.
Next week I will be in Washington DC supporting our KIPI Program partners at the DHS S&T Cybersecurity and Innovation Showcase for the week commencing January 7th and available for meetings with you or your colleagues in the DC area. Please . I've planned to meet with as many of you as I know will be available. If you are in DC next week please just Contact us to reserve a meeting time. The All Member Ballot for the revised Operating Procedures passed a few days before the close, which is great to see. Thank you again for your support of Kantara, even in these less stimulating administrative areas.
It is with great pleasure that we welcome new individual member Silvia Knittl from Europe.
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Program, Work Group and Discussion Group Updates:
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