Hello everyone
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Summer has arrived in July is a month where 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.
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 lateand southern hemispheres are at their extremes. As I sat in my back garden on a hot and sunny summer's day I was reminded by this as a friend posted a picture of Mount Ruapehu in the center of New Zealand's North Island fully laden with snow, ready for the ski season. I had planned a few days off to ski in Austria in early April, but of course it was cancelled as so many of our business or personal plans were, wherever we were in the world. I partially made up for it last week taking a few days off in Munich to be with extended family. It's a beautiful city in a beautiful part of Germany so it was well worth the hassle of the travel that even on this short distance seemed as tiring as a long-haul. Maybe it's breathing in your own air for so long. Masks were mandatory all through the airport, on the plane for the flight, in the arrival airport, on public transport, in shops and anywhere crowded, but the level of compliance was a high and . in out the other end of course. And we came equipped with anti-bacterial gel and wipes, not that we needed them since the airline, all shops, restaurants etc made them readily available so in terms of personal risk, although heightened, it felt manageable at all times.
July 2020 may go on record for the highest number of virtual conferences and webinars in a single month in our community. I don't know how it was for you, but together with Identiverse, One World Identity's KNOW, other industry associations and company webinars, I found my calendar often triple booked on some popular hours. Kantara kicked off its own Summer webinar series in July with the Assurance Program's 'What does it take to be approved as NIST 800-63-3 conformant' and the UMA Working Group's 21st Century Health Information Interoperability + user Control'. Both of these were well presented and well attended. A special thanks to speakers ID.me's Blake Hall, KUMA's Ray Kimble, NIST's David Temoshok, HIE of One's Adrian Gropper and Identos's Alec Laws, wonderfully supported by Staff and in particular Ruth Puente, who helped with both sessions. Summer's not over yet so stand by for other announcements!
With many vacation plans reset to staycations, the working groups were more active and more well attended than is usual for this time of the year. Kantara's three Information Sharing Interoperability Working Group project streams made good progress, with the externally drafted Personal Data Receipt Framework being given its first showing, before it is formally contributed for peer review, study and comment. It was a similar story with the AdvCIS (Advanced Consent & Info Sharing) developing a draft Consent Receipt v1.2 and the Intentcasting project getting into a steady rhythm of meetings. July was also the month that most comments on draft standards being developed in ISO SC27 WG5 were due, and Kantara's Board SDO Liaison sub committee were hard at work in particular on ISO TS 27560 - Consent record information structure, where there are opportunities at both a high level and detailed level, to contribute to the direction of this work. If you would like to contribute to ISO SC27 standards in Digital Identity and Privacy technologies, members can do that via Kantara's formal liaison with ISO.
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.
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