Hello everyone
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We saw that Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was cancelled and Kantara's UK Ambassador Andi attending RSA in San Francisco last week wearing another of his various hats, reported the exhibition floor much quieter than in recent years. Connect:ID in Washington DC March 11-12 is up next in the US and I hope that it will not be unduly affected - both for myself and the many Kantara members participating. I will be supporting the conference organizers by moderating the Wednesday morning Identity track presentations and panel through till lunchtime. If you are attending, please do use Kantara's booth #210 as a base and convening point. Not in DC for Connect:ID because you're in Europe? Not to worry. Kantara's Director of Assurance Operations is Conference Chair for Whitehall Media's IDM Europe one day conference at the Steigenberger Airport hotel in Frankfurt, so please make your way there and participate.
2020 is also set to be defining for Kantara as it doubles down on its mission with a series of strategic partnerships and reinforced alignments that we expect to announce over the course of the year.
2019, Kantara's 10th anniversary year, was the appropriate point in time to brainstorm ideas with the Board and its sub committee the Assurance Review Board, to set in play a series of activities in 2020 that together cement the foundational role that Kantara assumes in the industry. I look forward to sharing more with you when there's more to share.
January saw good progress in the other two Kantara branded entities. In the Kantara Educational Foundation, the Board was strengthened with the arrival of Mary Ellen Condon as an additional Non Executive Director, continuing a role she held at IDESG up until its assets transitioned to Kantara and gives increased continuity with respect to those ex IDESG assets that are in the care of the Foundation. The Foundation was also received its non-profit determination letter from the IRS, a further step towards fulfilling its mission regarding grant-funded and and sponsored education and outreach. In Kantara Initiative Europe, work on evaluating the 2nd call proposals continued unabated through the holiday/New Year period, culminating in a meeting of the consortium partners in Brussels on Friday January 31st, the last day of the month to review the ranking of the marked proposals with European Commission officials. Of course the day was significant in another way as well, being the day that the UK officially withdrew from the European Union to commence the transition period. There was an interesting dynamic at work because the price of Eurostar train tickets were at an unprecedented low, the company clearly thinking that demand would fall away at this crucial time. As a consequence the train was busier than I ever remember it - a bell-weather for the future perhaps - at least I hope so.
The working groups have been busy also. The FIRE working group's Distributed Identity Assurance 1.0.0 Draft 1 specification has attracted interest, while the Consent and Information Sharing Work Group had its final meetings before being archived this coming week. The new Information Sharing Interoperability Work Group is now underway with a broader scope and much more manageable IPR, to enable more projects to be worked on simultaneously. The Federation Interoperability Work Group's SAMLv2.0 Deployment Profile for Federation Interoperability completed its 45 day IPR review and public comment and will enter Kantara's formal publication process for its Recommendations and Technical Specifications. Coming up soon is the Health Identity Assurance Work Group's Report on Design Goals for a Healthcare Identity Environment Architecture. Last but by no means least is the Identity Assurance Work Group's facilitating discussions with NIST representatives regarding the aspects of the SP 800-63-3 Digital Identity Guidelines that have proven challenging for private sector conformance while also preparing comments on the draft Pan Canadian Trust Framework - this month responding to the Verified login component on its second iteration.
January is the month that we begin populating the Events calendar with conferences and similar events globally where Kantara has been allocated podium space for its members in good standing. And applying also to members, if you have been selected to speak at an event, please let us know, so that we can promote it through social media. Please keep returning to the Events page regularly and be sure to get conference discounts with our code.
New member announcements perfectly exemplify the promise that a New Year and a new decade bring to Kantara. It is with great pleasure that we welcome Microsoft to Kantara as an organization (non Board) member as well as UK based Folio Technologies Limited and Australian based Neocapita Security Consulting Pty. Ltd. Please also join me in welcoming Individual Contributor Hitoshi Kokumai known to many of you as the vanguard of the Expanded Password System and welcoming back renewing Board member digi.me and Individual Contributors Lisa LeVasseur and Mary Hodder.
Welcoming so many new and returning members in a single month really is the perfect way to to start a happy and prosperous New Year and new decade.
Kantara looks forward to serving you all in your endeavours to lift the ecosystem While on the subject of Conferences, the members email last week giving away one pass each to Connect:ID and KNOW Identity on a first come first served basis went to Kantara member Easy Dynamics Corporation's Sarah Chu and JJ Harkema.
Kantara's February started with its normal cadence, with the eGov Working Group call which is the first Monday of the month. It's a small and intimate selection of regulars from Europe and North America which makes for great discussion as topics of culture and approach, news and updates are explored.
The following week saw me in London attending an OIX UK event on Tuesday, spend time with new member Folio Technologies on Wednesday exploring how Kantara's networks could support Folio in their goals just as it supports Kantara with membership, and participating in the Think Digital Identity conference on Thursday. It was a great privilege to riff with Kantara member Meeco's Katryna Dow on the International Identity panel where we speculated how the UK would position itself post-Brexit, being geographically close to Europe but its longstanding cultural ties to west and much further away. This topic continued to be discussed many days after the event and is likely to attract plenty more discussion in the coming months.
The third week of February saw Assurance Operations Director Ruth and I in Vienna speaking at the TIIME Workshop, the European equivalent of the legendary Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) held twice yearly in Mountain View California where we support eGov WG Chair Rainer Horbe and his wife Andrea who are such gracious event hosts. This is the one convening point for Higher Education and industry, coming from all over the world as they do. The conference dinner in the Natural History museum, one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture I have ever seen, is always a highlight.
The final week of February saw me catching up on Kantara's other activities. Top of that list is the development of the Service Assessment Criteria for NIST 800-63-3C (Federation Assurance Levels) being undertaken in the Identity Assurance work group, the editing resource generously sponsored by Kantara member ID.me. It is members like ID.me that support the organization with membership as well as sponsorship of vital work, make Kantara the community that it is, Thank you ID.me! Close behind comes the great efforts of the Healthcare Identity Assurance work group's near final draft Report entitled 'Design goals for a Healthcare identity environment architecture'. Consent Receipt topped the February downloads again with 125 downloads, followed by the UMA specifications and the UMA Business Model.
I emailed selected members that I thought might be interested in opening a WG on mDL (Mobile Drivers Licence) - not so much for its driving relationships but for its use as a mobile identification tool. We have been assisting the Secure Technology Alliance (STA) with the development of a white paper which will be released later this month, and given Kantara's reputation in credibility in operating Trust Frameworks, the emerging idea is that the time is right to begin drawing on this largely blank canvas that is the mDL ecosystem today. If you are reading this, and have interest to sponsor projects in a possible mDL work group please Contact Us.
Onwards!
Kind regards
Colin
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