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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There seems to be a chink of light at the end of the Covid tunnel - or at least there seems to be..
The easing of the lockdown restrictions, together with better spring-like weather, spirits have been lifted spirits even if the reality of our global situation is still months, if not years, away from something resembling normal.Even Even the new normal starts to seem appealing!
And, as the blame game heats up as the citizenry take stock of how well or how badly its government handled the early phase and peak of the pandemic, we can collectively be collectively proud of the Kantara members that reworked their solutions to contribute to the construction of the road to 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 there 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 3rd 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 3 three project streams are now fully in flight and already producing orking groups
It has been an intense month for Kantara on the international standards front, with the ISO SC27 meetings held virtually instead of in St Petersburg. Kantara has a formal liaison, attends meetings and last year, proposed the new work item which was recently approved by national bodies and goes by the descriptor ISO/IEC TS 27560 Consent record information structure. In approving the project, there were comments from China, Italy and the Philippines. However the disruption impacted the appointment of editors so, as the proposer of the work, it fell to me to draft a successful disposition of comments so that a working draft #1 could be produced in advance of the next meeting in Warsaw in September. The consent-related project work in the ISI-WG has relevance to the ISO effort going forward, so please participate and contribute to the ISI-WG.
The Identity Assurance WG continues preparing additional Assessment Criteria for accredited Assessors to assess service providers seeking the Kantara Trust Mark for NIST 800-63-3 to encompass NIST 800-63-3C (Federation Assurance Level 2) and following that, all of Level 3 - IAL3, AAL3 and FAL3. While on the topic of the Classes of Approval available under Kantara's Identity Assurance Program, the ARB and Staff are in the midst of refreshing the look and feel of the Trust Status List to both add more detail and make it easier to follow for the steadily increasing volume of interested parties to the page. Talking of testing, the UMA-WG is soliciting interest in recrafting some existing work to test some AS basics. We also continue to 'circle the wagons' on exactly what work we might undertake in a future mDL Work Group to accelerate the adoption of its use in mobile identification. And we are about to start start re-circling the wagons around conferences in the latter part of the year. Kuppinger Cole's Custech in October is a case in point, where much of the work that members had put into the pre-conference Workshop as a curtain-raiser to the European Identity Conference that was due to be held this month, can be re-tuned for Custech, and without the stipulation of in-person presentations and associated travel. But before that, expect to see members and Kantara staff online in the Festival of Identity and the OWI's Digital forum. Please Contact Us if you have an interest in any of the topics above.
Adding to our steadily increasing cohort of Individual contributors, this month we welcome Cigdem Sengul and Manvendra Kumar. Thank yououtputs. 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!
Kind regards
Colin
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