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Not only did we have some great presentations by Kantara members Eve Maler and Ian Glazer, but also Sarah Squire did a great job in leading the 'Birds of a Feather' session for our pre-formative digital identity professionals project (a.k.a ID-Pro).
And don't forget social! 'Breakfast with Kantara' at Jillian's on 4th Street was well attended despite the early hour on the Wednesday, while the 'Friends and Family' cocktail party with the IDESG folks on Thursday graced visitors to Mary Hodder's parents hillside apartment with offering most exquisite views of San Francisco and the bridge. Hat tip to Kantara Director organizations CA, Digi.me and Forgerock - thank you for sponsoring - and thanks to Mary's and Virtual's organizational prowess!
We sure needed the respite by then because the day-long Board meeting at Forgerock's SFO offices on Thursday was packed with reports and presentations, action, motions and minutes - all with one aim - to deliver great value to Kantara members through 2017 and beyond.
From San Francisco the circus moved to Vienna, where long time member and eGov Working Group Chair Rainer Hoerbe had organized the TIIME (Trust and Internet Identity Meeting in Europe) unconference. Rainer , and his wife Andrea, assisted by Sabine, were fantastic hosts and steered us on and off trams and through the beautiful streets of Vienna to a historic tavern where Kantara's European members ruminated over items discussed in Kantara's pre-conference workshop. Along with many familiar names, see the proceedings of the TIIME unconference here .
In 2017, Kantara will pivot around a refinement of the existing Mission Statement and sharpen its focus on conformity assessment of its frameworks and specifications, with closer orchestration and re-alignment of WG and DG outputs towards its programs. While Kantara's existing strap-line 'Join, Innovate, Trust' will remain close to our hearts, you'll see and hear more of 'Invent, Innovate, Implement' which talks directly to our outputs.
Those outputs are the world leading and thought leading specifications, frameworks, conformity assessment programs, contributions to ISO SC27, OECD via ITAC, Reports, Recommendations and more. Those outputs are your outputs proposed by members, non member participants, directed-funds organizations and Liaison organizations as things you wanted to see Kantara do in order to improve the digital economy in the areas of identity and personal data, consistent with our Mission that seeks to build a better, safer, more private and equitable online experience for people.
The band of member volunteers that consistently step up to deliver Kantara artifacts such as the Consent Receipt v1.0 and very soon, UMA v2.0, are often the same folks who assist the Board and staff with strategic and operational re-alignments.
We need more of you! Please take that next step and email me at the address above, and let's discuss how you and/or your organization can help Kantara reach its goals either through membership, directed funds or volunteer resources to contribute use cases, expert knowledge, project management, Secretariat resources etc - not for Kantara's own sake - but for your organization's customers, consumers and users of its online services.
We are receiving a lot of interest in Consent Receipt and UMA as tools in the GDPR compliance arsenal right now. And interest in our conformity assessment program for Identity Assurance that is currently deployed just in the public sector but has so much potential in the private sector. There are not many open platforms to develop industry specifications and frameworks and none as accessible as Kantara's. That capability is at the center of Kantara's value to the industries and communities it serves.
Take a deep breath - the 2017 conference season about to descend on us. Let's embrace all it has to offer and in turn promote the principles that we believe in February was not all conferences and play - make no mistake.
Kantara's new Mission statement was given its seal of approval by the Board at its February meeting. It goes to the essence of what we do:
Kantara Initiative is the global consortium improving trustworthy use of identity and personal data through innovation, standardization and good practice
A lot of what you will see from Kantara this year will speak directly to its Mission. It's easy to talk about it and write about the need for it, as other consortia in our community are so adept at. But it's darn hard to do.
Subject Matter Experts and Money. That's what it takes. We are blessed with the former and the richness of the conversation they bring. We are constantly challenged by the latter. To those organizations hanging out on Kantara's mailing list or lurking on its Working and Discussion Groups, I say this to you; 'It is not going to happen by magic'. If you think that by sitting and waiting for somebody else to invest the time and money to build the artefacts so you can just consume them, you are mistaken. Kantara prides itself on its conviction to maintain low barrier to entry so folks can engage with the work. That is sacrosanct. But unless and until you actually engage with the people and invest in the work yourselves, the value will not follow. So please - get engaged, get out your check-book to direct some funds to the piece of work you want to see Kantara do, and in so doing, drive this community forward in improving the trustworthy use of identity and personal data to build a better, safer and more equitable digital economy.
You'll see a lot of changes in the coming months - a new, simpler membership structure, some things going on in Europe, refreshed ByLaws and Operating Procedures to support a refreshed IPR policy, and announcements about new conformity assessment specifications to deliver our mission to the new emerging standards and regulations that will underpin so much of future online experiences.
It's big, it's bold - it's 2017 
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Cheers!
Colin
Around the Houses:
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- We have some racy new badges, device stickers and , Kantara flyers and slide deck ready to go for 2017. To Members in good standing that are holding an event where Kantara and its assets are being presented, please to email staff@kantarainitiative.org to take some to distribute.
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- The WGs and DGs of Leadership Council now operate a blog, so you can read what's going on in groups you are not regularly attending. See it here
- ID Pro DG work is progressing well with the Code of Conduct project stream complete. The making good progress with Membership/Services and Governance project streams still have a ways to go. Most of all, ID Pro needs founder seed funding to begin to fulfill its own Mission and Vision while being incubated at Kantara. If . Those things need to take shape fast now, as corporate interest in becoming founding members with requisite seed funds support was very much in evidence at RSA. We have 3 large well known corporations interested in supporting ID Pro as founding members. We need 3 more to make it happen. If your organization wants to be acclaimed as a founding member of a new Association of Digital Identity Professionals, please email me, colin@kantarainitiative.org .
- If you have opted to receive news from Kantara or following us on twitter @KantaraNews you'll know that the Consent Receipt is out for The Consent Receipt 45 day Public Review here . We expect the final V1.0 to be published sometime in March.finished on February 20th with a good bunch of comments from across the globe. Voltage Gate's David Turner is in the editing chair and is preparing the disposition of comments for Consent and Information Sharing Work Group to review and during March.
- The Identity Assurance Working Group is reviewing the officially published 800-63-3 draft and preparing a further round of comments to augment those submitted on the GitHub pre-release in the summer.
- The Identity Relationship Management Working Group are poised to vote through their draft 'Refining the Design Principles of Identity Relationship Management' Report as a follow up to its initial 'Principles' report that attracted worldwide attention. I'm sure this one will too.
- The eGovernment Working Group is poised to vote through its draft interim report 'Code of Conduct for Relying Parties' to support the Identity Assurance program and future conformance assessments.
- As always if you have a query or question, staff are only too willing to assist. Email them on staff@kantarainitiative.org
Events: See them here! https://kantarainitiative.org/calendars/
- One of the main themes coming from the Membership Survey in December was to increase our networking and social activities. We listened and acted upon that sentiment. Accordingly you have been notified of 'Breakfast with Kantara' at RSA in San Francisco, with a members only 'friends and family' evening event co-hosted in conjunction with our close liaison and friend IDESG. A social event is planned for the TIIME conference in Vienna the following week. Stay tuned for more social events in May folks!Next up is the KYC conference in London in March, then IIW and EIC in May, along with other more local and regional events along the way. And we are quietly working on something very special for September. So don't leave your summer vacation too late please folks..
Cheers!
Colin