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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I’m in sunny Seattle in the first week of September as I write this month’s edition of Director’s Corner, as we start the second half of the conference season.
Our first event conference, hosted by our friends MyData2018, was held just last week in Helsinki. The Kantara community was well represented as members Consentua, digi.me, Open Consent Group, Trunomi and Ubisecure demonstrated an interoperability use case for the Kantara Consent Receipt. These, along with other members such as Datafund, iWelcome, UNLOQ, and non-participants such as MyLifeDigital have all deployed Kantara’s Consent Receipt in a variety of ways inside their solution offerings. Kantara, in a conference containing more theory than practice, showed the personal data community with the interop demo, Adrian Gropper’s demo of HIE of One with UMA and my own presentation on the many ways in which Kantara delivers on the 6 MyData principles that, ‘while others talk, we do’.
The International Identity Summit (IIS) event hosted this year in Seattle (the reason why I am here) by the University of Washington with the Industry host and Kantara liaison DIACC, is very different. It is essentially an invitation-only government event where jurisdictions share knowledge behind closed doors that are later opened to allow industry to engage. Typically Kantara might not attend because it has not been granted podium time. But with Kantara holding the largest contingent of government members of any identity industry consortia and the fact that KIPI program performer Lockstep Technologies is announcing its transition to commercialization along with I'm in my garden office in Dorset on this lovely warm day, thankful for the last of summer's sun and the peaceful rhythm of life going on around me, as I begin September's round-up.
I kicked off September's conference round in Seattle, where Kantara leads participated in a two-day industry event added onto the International Identity Summit (IIS). This invitation-only event is held to allow governments to discuss digital identity challenges and opportunities behind closed doors. With several agencies from governments around the world as members of Kantara, and most of them attending both the IIS and the industry days, it was a great opportunity to catch up. The first day saw us split into groups to brainstorm various challenges around counter-fraud and anomaly detection. On the second day we were treated to updates from both government and industry. Kantara members Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada, SecureKey Technologies, 1Kosmos, and SecureKey Technologies all presenting, we are honor-bound to support them as you might expect Kantara could do for you. But it doesn't stop there. We have the Consumer Identity World series kick off its 2018 Tour in Seattle in 2 weeks time, featuring KIPI grant fund recipient Lockstep Technologies Australia took to the podium and presented their latest and greatest. It was a pleasure to support them, and to catch up with sponsors for Industry Day 1 and our KIPI grant funders, DHS Science & Technology Directorate, as well as sponsors for Industry Day 2, Liaison partner DIACC and the University of Washington.
Next up for us was the Consumer Identity World 2018 Tour series kick off in Seattle two weeks later. This event featured Kantarians Eve Maler, David Turner and Andrew Hughes Hughes on Friday September 21st. Discounts are available to members for this event. Later in the month I will be speaking on the state of the industry in London with Kantara's showcase update and demonstrating the interoperability use case for the Kantara Consent Receipt shown in Helsinki in August. This showcase will be shown again in Amsterdam at the end of this month.
I keynoted, in the last week of September, at Ubisecure's opening ceremony for its London office.
Looking back into August, Kantara had both a busy and successful month.
In the US, Kantara's Assurance Review Board, the executive sub committee of the main Board governing the Trust Framework Operations and Assurance programme, recommended to Kantara’s Board that ID.me be granted a Trust Mark as the first Credential Service Provider that conformed to NIST SP 800-63-3 Identity Assurance at IAL2 & AAL2. The extensive press coverage (read the combined press release here) that the grant of Trust Mark received, has started a wave as several additional providers (some of which you can see here) joining the queue for approval and grant of Trust Mark through Kantara’s Trust Framework Operations Programme. The transition of IDESG's assets into the newly established 501c3 entity (the Kantara Initiative Educational Foundation Inc) was completed in July and August. This was a period of consolidation with the IDEF WG beginning to take shape with further work drafting its charter. Kantara has control of IDESG's website and wiki and of course the IDEF Registry in its new V2 guise as well as the IDEF Trust Mark re-styled for Kantara's stable of schemes.
In Europe, Kantara Initiative Europe, the Estonian based trade association operating Kantara's assets under licence, was successful in winning a bid for grant funding for ICT24 Next Generation Internet from the European Commission under the H2020 program.
Our summer webinar series featuring 2 Australian members - the Australian Government's Digital Transformation Agency and Lockstep Technologies entiies on MDAV, drew a good number of attendees with great questions. Thank you to those that attended and if you registered you would have received the links to the presentations and recordings. We ran out of time during DTA's webinar to answer several of the more detailed questions. The eGov Working Group, as the host of the seminar, has resolved to approach DTA to do a follow-up 'deep dive' on some specific aspects of the Trust Framework and technical architecture. Join the eGov WG and stay tuned for more details.
On the process and procedures side of the house, your Leadership Council leads progressed the revision to the Operating Procedures over July and August. It is very close to being able to share with you, so stand by for it. My thanks to Ken Dagg, Sal D'Agostino and Andrew Hughes.
August saw Digicert and Condon Associates LLC join Kantara from IDESG, and membership renewals from the Australia Government's DTA, ForgeRock, Meeco, Ubisecure, Mark Lizar and a Board directed complimentary membership to longtime Kantara Board member and unflagging supporter Nat Sakimura of NRI for 9 years of service. Thank you one and all for your support for Kantara and the growing community it serves speaking on the state of the industry in the UK. With that in mind, watch out for some straight talking from me on this topic in the UK computer press, and an associated blog, in the next few days.
Lastly, we rounded off the month with news of Kantara's growing presence, credibility and reputation in Europe. In concert with our key European Liaison EEMA, Kantara is part of a new initiative, Go.eID.AS. Intrigued? See the press release here.
October gets pretty busy as many of us converge on Mountain View for IIW which is followed by Kantara's F2F plenary on Friday October 26th. Please join us as we forward plan 2019!
And November is even busier, but that's a story for another day.. 
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For members reading this round-up, stand by for a couple of All Member Ballots coming your way in the next couple of weeks. Your comments and support in timely voting of these ballots maintains the flow of work and process in Kantara.
September saw several new members and renewals: Thank you globally acknlowledged subject matter experts Christopher Olsen and Ian Glazer for their individual membership renewals and thank you (Andi) Hindle Consulting for stepping up from individual to SME membership, also renewals from ITIM, Uninett, Zygma, Athena Health, and 2Keys. All together we grow the community and play our parts to make the digital experience better, safer and privacy respecting.
Kind Regards,
Colin
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