Hello everyone
This is the running update from the Executive Director. Have questions or comments? Suggest some added information or edits? Contact ED Colin at kantarainitiative dot org.
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It was great! But thank goodness it's over. .
To no surprise to most, May continued in the same vein as April - just so busy. The conference season crescendo is in June and I write this from Washington DC on the first of six speaking engagements I have for Kantara in the US, UK and Europe in the next 27 days, as well as for others in Canada and elsewhere.
In further support of Kantara's Trust Framework Operations program and its NIST 800-63-3 Rev 3 Class of Approval, the US federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published its much awaited policy on identity credential and access management. It lays out the US federal government's expectations of agencies in this regard and the role of various stakeholders, with a strong emphasis on 63-3. As the Leadership Council chair observed, our 800-63-3 Rev 3 Class of Approval under the Identity Assurance Framework tangibly demonstrates Kantara's alignment - that *this* is the scarce resource that only Kantara can offer. In addition, the new memo makes it far easier to make the connection to a purchasing department requirement - both are the magic ingredients to selling approvals. The month did not end there for the Identity Assurance Working Group (IAWG) as it was busy providing comments back to DIACC on its Pan-Canadian Trust Framework.
Conference-wise, as I said at the beginning, May began where April left off, finding us at the Connect:ID conference in Washington DC which I talked about in last month's Director's Corner. I presented 'Build Customer Confidence with Assurance Trust Marks' there making the case for the IDESG logo to be re-crafted as a consumer Trust Mark. It's not only the Mark that is getting some interest however. There is also some interest from another non-profit entity in leveraging the features and functionality of the self attesting Registry that was used for service providers self attesting conformance to the IDentity Ecosystem Framework. It's early days and will be a slow burn, but nonetheless promising for those artifacts safely located in the Kantara Educational Foundation..
After a week off we were into the European Members Plenary near Munich on Monday May 13th. This event curtain-raises the Kantara pre-conference workshop at the European Identity Conference the following day. We had 15 attend the plenary and around 30 or so attend the pre-conference workshop - lighter than in previous years perhaps due to a blockchain session taking place in the next room. Folks are naturally attracted to the new shiny thing but only later realize that it is existing ideas reprised in new architecture where much of the existing operational functionality and feature-sets still has to be incorporated.
Now we are preparing June's events too. We start with our newest liaison partner CARIN Alliance's Summit in DC that I am speaking at. This is followed by Identity North in Toronto where Leadership Council Chair Andrew hughes will be leading sessions in Day 2 unconference. At the end of this week is Think Digital Identity in the UK, followed the next week by Identity Week in the UK, followed by EEMA in the UK and Whitehall Media IDM in the UK the week after. Finally, in the last week of June, we are back in Washington DC for Identiverse. I am 'circling the wagons' right now for our Masterclass which features, the Consent and Information sharing work group's consent receipt demo, ID.me's Blake Hall and AllclearID's Catherine Schulten talking about the lastest policy releases positively impacting Kantara's assurance program, the User Manager Access (UMA) working group having presentations from MIT's Thomas Hardjono, Tim Reiniger together with Canadian UMA deployer Identos's Mike Cook, plus a cameo appearance from Ian Glazer on ID Pro. Please give these folks your full support.
Mittetulundusühing Kantara Initiative Europe is deep into reviewing the 38 proposals it was allocated from the 109 received for the first call for proposals in the NGI_Trust project.
As mentioned last month, we continue to hire more staff to keep up with the interest in Kantara, with Chris Healy becoming our first 'Kantara ambassador'. Chris is charged with developing Kantara's ethos and membership in the Washington DC area. Chris is on the Staff list so just Contact us if he can help in any way.
Remember to take a look at our 10th Anniversary Infographic and celebration video here, straight off the homepage of the website. There will be virtual cake cutting and actual cake cutting on or near the day.
Please join me in welcoming new member One.Thing.less That's how I would characterize June 2019.
The month started with liaison partner CARIN Alliance's Summit in DC. Kantara members and supporters were out in force. Thank you LG Software, ID.me, Catherine Schultern, Noreen Whysel and Dr Tom for your support of three of us speaking formally and all of you speaking informally. We had Identity North in Toronto next where Leadership Council Chair Andrew Hughes represented Kantara, followed by the Think Digital Identity for Government conference in London where Kantara Board member ISOC's Robin Wilton spoke brilliantly on data ethics while Kantara member IDCrowd's David Black and I tag-teamed on Assurance.
As we hit the second week of June, Identity Week UK saw presentations from Kantara members IDCrowd and Meeco as well as myself. I had to cut away a day early to head to Brussels and put my Kantara Europe hat on for the Management meeting of the H2020 R&D NGI_Trust consortium, where (after any potential conflicts of interest were avoided) the 38 evaluations done by the Kantara Europe Directors in the previous weeks were stacked up and ranked alongside other 71 proposals evaluated by other consortium partners to draw the top eighteen projects and discuss the way ahead for the next two calls. The level of innovation and sheer range of proposals was simply jaw-dropping.
Week three of June was birthday week - Kantara's 10th anniversary! - and as with all events in June, Kantara's sessions have been afforded extra time by the organizers to run our video of achievements. It did that 'with bells on' at Whitehall Media's IDM UK conference and EEMA's annual conference the day after. Liaison partner EEMA were especially accommodating allowing us to interrupt proceedings for a cake cutting ceremony as Kantara treated all conference goers to really yummy cake, straight after Kantara's session featuring UMAnitarians Cigdem Sengul and Tim Reiniger and Kantara Consent Receipt's Mark Lizar. Check out the photos on Twitter @kantaraNews
June finished with a great flourish in DC and Identiverse where Kantara members and new DC local staffer Chris Healy manned a display table in the community area of the Expo Hall while Kantara's Masterclass saw ForgeRock's Eve Maler, Catherine Schultern, Kantara-incubated ID Pro's Ian Glazer, MIT's Thomas Hardjono, Identos's Mike Cook, Consent and Information sharing work group's Andrew Hughes and myself walked the audience through the latest status of Kantara's work. All these folks spoke in other sessions and it was especially good to listen to Identos's Alec Law and Mike Cook relate their interoperability experiences with UMA in Canada, Eve and ForgeRock colleague Ashley on 'Real-World Identity Relationships Driving Data Decisioning' and ID Machines' Sal D'Agostino, Chair of Kantara's since archived Identity Relationship Management work group speak on 'The Relationship Lifecycle of Things'. Catherine and Eve teamed up the next day with liaison partner CARIN Alliance to lead 'A protected Digital Identity for the Healthcare sector' with a play to UMA/HEART and Andrew Hughes drew the shortest of straws to be opening on Friday morning after the conference party to demonstrate Kantara Consent Receipts in action to a decent sized and engaged audience.
If folks reading this feel they aren't getting the value from their Kantara membership they would ideally like, I suggest they reach out to the folks mentioned above to learn how Kantara's work assists their industry profile.
Overloaded with conferences as it was, I worked or traveled pretty much every day in June. Okay, so I'm a year older every time June comes around, but it really does seem to get busier every year. I know that some of you reading this were on this traveling circus too - it is a widespread phenomenon in our industry. I can't tell you how good it is to reach July 
. I appreciate that it has not been the greatest starts to July in the US with floods around DC and earthquakes out west. But I love the UK in July - Wimbledon, Formula 1, the Cricket World Cup this year (if you know who is in the finals you might appreciate I'll be keeping close on that) - and if watching any of that becomes boring, watching politics play out sure won't be ..
Exhausted but very very happy with the vibe and progress, we rest and recharge during July. That it's taken me ten days to get this out bears testament to that. But to be fair on myself, Staff also use this time to review and refine the website and wiki, fine-tune our processes and plan the second half of the year. We are already working through our list of 'to do's' that has built up over the last six months. Some changes are subtle but we hope you notice them in due course and feel that they serve you better. Just Contact us to help us make anything better for you.
A final reminder to take a look at our 10th Anniversary celebration video, Infographic and social Wall here, straight off the homepage of the website (and scroll down).
This month we welcome new Individual Contributor members Christine Abruzzi and Martin Smith and welcome back corporate members GEANT, MEECO, United ID, USPS and Zentry. Please join me in honoring these members. We thank each and every one of you for your support of Kantara's ethics, ethos, its specifications, R&D Program and Trust Marked Assurance operations.
On the community side of the house:
- the Consent & Information Sharing WG (CISWG) is gathering contributions for the first draft of Consent Receipt v2.0 and collaborating with members on the Consent Receipt Generator and developing the demo with its requisite privacy dashboard. It is also gathering contributions on the DIACC's (the Digital Identification and Authentication Council of Canada) document out related to Notice and Consent https://diacc.ca/2019/04/03/notice-consent-overview-conformance-discussion-drafts/ as a component of the Pan-Canadian Trust Framework to set a baseline of public and private sector interoperability of identity services and solutions. If you want to contribute you must join the CIS working group (no charge)the UMA WG is maturing its continues its call for contributions (see it from the wiki landing page here) for the next build of the specification, and see the existing known implementations here.
- CISWG also hosts the Blinding Identity Taxonomy, a joint effort with Hyperledger Indy thank to the outstanding efforts of Paul Knowles and the team at Dativa. That was very much in the news again as Dativa's submission to the UK Parliament was taken up and published. Search for Paul on LinkedIn and pick up this activity and its associated video of the parliamentary session.
- the UMA WG continues its call for contributions of UMA profiles and extensions while also fine-tuning the business - legal framework model and preparing presentations for Identiverse as well as the 105th IETF meeting in Canada. Interoperability testing is increasingly needed so if you can help, please let us know. the Identity Assurance Work Group (IAWG) has released a refreshed a recast UMA submission for IETF#105 in Montreal next month.
- hot on the heels of the US federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) policy on identity credential and access management the GAO just published GAO-19-288 'Federal Agencies need to strengthen online identity verification processes' a need that Kantara can fulfil via its Trust Framework Operations program and its NIST 800-63-3 Rev 3 Class of Approval. Its steward ,the Identity Assurance Working Group (IAWG) is putting the final touches to its report to NIST regarding its learnings from assessments where guidance and clarification would be helpful. The refreshed Overview and Glossary for the Identity Assurance Framework (IAF) is out for public review and comment and invites them allwelcomes your contribution.
I'm looking forward to a break in summer for sure, but let the good times keep rolling right through till the Fall and beyond.
Keep well, keep hustling and keep championing Kantara's ethics, ethos and services to the industry and community we serve - YOUSummer's here. Enjoy and relax!
Kind Regards,
Colin
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