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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Summer has arrived in the northern hemisphere and fortuitously (or not if extra care is not taken) lockdown measures have eased, to enable some respite from being indoors for so long.
There's certainly no shortage of industry related online content to overfill our days with - cabin fever progressively replaced by Zoom fever 
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And, as the blame game heats up as citizenry take stock of how well or how badly its government handled the early phase and peak of the pandemic, we can collectively be proud of the Kantara members that reworked their solutions to contribute to the construction of the road that will lead us out of this crisis. Thank you again digi.me at Director level and Folio.ID, Identos, ID.me and MIT Trust::Data Consortium with its Safepaths program, along with members Transmute, Meeco and individuals Mark Lizar and supporters Adrian Gropper all still working on various aspects of the COVID crisis in our community and others. Another timely and considered piece of work came from Meeco, with its review of the European Strategy for Data. I strongly encourage those within and outside of Europe, to read this report and see Kantara alongside MyData in Use case #5, Data Interoperability and Reusability. 'Nurture, Develop, Operate - that's what we do'.
May has been another busy month in all main activity areas of Kantara. Kantara Europe is neck deep in marking the new proposals seeking grant funding in the third and final call of NGI_Trust. Kantara has 38 proposals to work through out of the 100+ that were received. It's been busy also for the Kantara Foundation as its Grants.gov application for US federal funding opportunities was approved, the culmination of months of effort by staff together with Director, Kay Chopard Cohen.
Kantara's Information Sharing Interoperability Working Group's three project streams are now fully in flight and already producing outputs. One to watch for in coming weeks is the formalization of the Blinding Identity Taxonomy into a report drawing on the original contribution by the Human Colossus Foundation. It is expected to be consumed by Hyperledger Indy Aries and others as well as Kantara. There is a some seminal thinking being championed by Tom Jones on self issued high assurance identifiers, self generated on a user's portable device, with particular interest to the Healthcare community, so keep a watch on how that develops. While on the topic of US Healthcare, Kantara, along with other Trust Framework Operators we have a liaison with - SAFE and DirectTrust are working with partners CARIN Alliance on a template federated Trust Framework contract to pass to CareQuality the subsidiary to the ONC's TEFCA RCE (Recognized Coordinating Entity) Sequoia to help prime the Trust Framework pump in that sector. Meanwhile UMA WG is reviewing parts of Identos's healthcare implementation with a view to potentially profiling them as additions to UMA's stable of standardized extensions and profiles. There's growing interest in developing a test harness for UMA Basics, so if you are reading this and implementing and and would be interested to know more, please Contact Us. Finally, IAWG is developing Service Assessment Criteria for Assessors to use to approve CSP Services as being compliant with the requirements specified in NIST 800-63 C Federation and Assertions.
We are giving some thought to running our Summer Webinar series again this year. It was very popular when we last held it in the summer of 2018. It is an ideal opportunity to showcase the work being undertaken in the work groups as well as Kantara members' implementations of them in their solutions. Interested to be involved? Please Contact Us.
Talking of Webinars, we help others out with theirs too. I am moderating a session this coming Thursday in the Festival of Identity. On June 25th, Kantara will present the shape and form of the privacy related challenges in mDL implementations in a Webinar hosted by the Secure Technology Alliance (STA). Remember, we are circling the wagons for a workshop as a part of Kuppinger Cole's Custech online conference in October. Again, Members please Contact Us if you are interested in being involved regarding any of the topics above.
The Identiverse Virtual agenda is out! Great to see organization member speakers from Forgerock, Hindle Consulting, Idemia, Microsoft, MIT::Trust Data Consortium and Individual Contributors Jon Lehtinen, Lorrayne Auld and Nat Sakimura. Well done folks!
During May we welcomed new Individual Contributor members Zenia Vasquez and Tom Jones and renewing Organization member Hindle Consulting along with renewing Individual Contributor members Christine Abruzzi, Catherine Schulten, Jon Lehtinen, Mark Lizar and Martin Smith. Thank you all for stepping up to support Kantara!
Onwards!But that newfound freedom comes at a risk, right? Risk assessment is something that we in the digital economy and specifically in the domains of digital identity and personal data agency, apply to these matters external to us.
And new to many in our families and our wider network of friends and contacts, is how risk was consciously or subconsciously evaluated for each outing as lockdown restrictions have eased. Personally I've been fascinated to observe how different people react, faced with making such evaluations. We have all seen the spectrum - from complete denial that there is even a problem or 'since I don't know anyone who has COVID, social distancing doesn't apply to me' right through the continuum to not venturing out at all as seniors in particular, understandably needing to be risk averse. Of course there is the constant percentage who say the government at one or any level is to blame whatever that circumstance - that we can go out, that we can't go out, that we can't do what we used to do and when we want to do it, that the government is being too soft, too hash, too soon, too late and so on. The outpouring of emotion over the treatment of George Floyd and the resulting #BlackLivesMatter movement was an example of where, if a personal risk assessment was undertaken before venturing out to join the crowds, the risk of catching or spreading the virus was weighed against the need to express that quite understandable strength of feeling.
Some of that emotion has renewed calls for more diversity and inclusion in this industry. It was a welcomed and growing theme before recent events and a theme that Kantara wants to help that project in Women in Identity and is still seeking sponsorship to help them. If you are reading this and your corporate social responsibility budget is looking to do good in this industry, then look no further - Contact Us or contact Women in IDentity. However, recent events have given it greater impetus. Kantara, like most associations in our industry and reflecting the industry itself is indeed well under-represented in this regard. I've just finished reading Women in Identity's June Newsletter and I commend the blogs in it to to everyone. They're right. As an industry we simply have to do better - Kantara included.
As anticipated last month, Kantara's Information Sharing Interoperability Working Group did indeed release the Blinding Identity Taxonomy Report joining the Report on the Design Goals for a Healthcare Identity Environment Architecture as the second of the two published Reports so far this year. During June I've been privileged to be invited onto ONC's FAST Identity Solutions SME panel to help assess the potential future digital identity architecture approaches for citizen-facing US Healthcare. The combination of Kantara's cohort of SMEs together with standards and best practice highly applicable to Healthcare sees the organization's engagement in the Healthcare sector increase by the month. It's not just uni-directional either. It was great to see an ONC rep attend a Kantara Healthcare Identity Assurance work group call this month. This reflects a trend of increased US federal agency interest in Kantara's global activities of late.
Meanwhile the larger Identity Assurance work group that is the steward for Kantara's Identity Assurance program, has completed the Service Assessment Criteria for NIST 800-63 C Federation and Assertions and is now embarking on all level 3 criteria - 800-63-3 IAL3, AAL3 and FAL3 - with grateful thanks to ID.me for its sponsorship of the unenviable editing task. That it has completed this work, while also submitting comments to the Pan-Canadian Trust Framework Credentials (Relationships and Attributes) component bears testament to just how hard these volunteers work, to selflessly support the development and maturing of the global ecosystem.
Selfless volunteered hard work is not just restricted to the IAWG but stretches across all of Kantara's Groups. In some cases efforts are spread across years and is heavily front-loaded, so much so that we often forget to celebrate the result much later in time. One of those cases involves UMAtarian Tim Reiniger and his efforts to help lawmakers in the Commonwealth of Virginia to see the necessity to tweak the Digital Identity law such that it better covers the range of ecosystem actors such as Trust Framework operators. That work began in 2018 and finished yesterday July 1st, when it came into force in State law. Thank you Tim!
Kantara Europe, together with its H2020 NGI-Trust partners, completed its short list selection of new proposals seeking grant funding in the third and final call of NGI_Trust. At this time of year, consortia form for grants in 2021 and Kantara is blessed with multiple offers to join a consortium bidding. Unfortunately we could not resource all requests coming to us, but we remain hopeful that all the proposals we were invited to consider, find success.
In technically challenging circumstances, the Secure Technology Alliance (STA) hosted the 3rd of its 4 Webinars on the Privacy and Trust aspects of a future mDL ecosystem on June 25th, led by Kantara's President Matt Thompson, supported by members John Wunderlich reviewing the mDL standard ISO 18013-5 through a privacy lens and Exponent's Christopher Williams looking at Trust-related aspects in the transaction communication flow. Despite the challenges our folks performed brilliantly. Thank you!
While on the subject of webinars, Kantara's own Summer Webinar series is taking shape with the first Webinar announced for July 15th - what does it take to be approved as NIST 800-63-3 conformant? This has only been open for registration a few days and the quality and quantity of registrants is truly humbling. Stay tuned for other sessions to be announced in coming weeks. Interested to be involved? Please Contact Us.
June saw us welcome new corporate member Human Colossus Foundation from Switzerland, new Individual Contributor member Mark King from the UK. Providing your financial support allows Kantara to further its mission and optimize benefits back to you.
June also saw renewals from Organization members Digital Transformation Agency Australian Government, United States Postal Service (USPS) US federal government executive branch, Australian/Belgian personal data specialist Meeco, and the UK personal data software innovator, KnowNow Information. and Individual Contributor member Barry Hieb. Thank you for everything you do to support Kantara!
Onwards!
Kind regards
Colin
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