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Hello everyone

This is the running update from the Executive Director. Have questions or comments? Suggest some added information or edits? Contact ED colin at kantarainitiative dot org.

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Happy Holidays everyone and best wishes for a fruitful and fulfilling 2019!

It's New Year's eve as I write 2018's last Director's Corner on a cloudy but mild winter's day. I hope your weather - be it searing heat in Australia or freezing cold in our most northern climes - has not deterred you from having some well deserved rest, recreation and catch-up time with family and friends.   

10 days ago in London, that was exactly the case, as the Gluu World Tour rolled into town and met up with Open Consent Group and other Kantara members for an extended Christmas lunch. With Kantara's 2018 Events Map with its near-on 20 events fresh in our minds, it was great to reflect on the year after having just returned from Brussels where Kantara Programs Manager Ruth and I had been been forward planning Kantara Initiative Europe's 2019 European Union H2020 grant funded NGI_Trust project with other consortia members GEANT, Fraunhofer, Tecnalia , EFIS and EDN. When the call opens in February to European-based entities, you'll see our KIPI R&D submission process re-purposed for use in Europe that, together with our deep relationship with communities doing ground-breaking work in the digital identity, access and privacy-preserving domains, is the reason Kantara was invited to join this consortium in an already highly successful call.       

Reflecting on 2018 from Kantara's perspective, it has been good overall. Kantara has significantly consolidated its finances over 2017, with net membership growth despite some churn.

The KIPI R&D program has seen two projects to progress through Phase 2 (Execution), with Lockstep's MDAV project already in Phase 3 Transition to Commercialisation branded as ValIDidy while Phase 3 determination on Exponent's MOB4PACS project that uses smartphones as PIV cards with NFC and BLE has been caught in the federal government shutdown. Both of these are stunningly concepted projects capable of significant commercial exploitation for the right investment partner and I will be happy to introduce interested parties.

Kantara's other major program, the Trust Framework and Assurance program, had a  

Mid-year Kantara absorbed the assets of the IDESG largely comprising the IDEF, the self attesting Registry, the wiki, website, committee artifacts and a small group of members and non member participants following the completion of the grant funding from NIST. While the transition into the newly established Kantara Initiative Educational Foundation operated almost seamlessly thanks in particular to the efforts of Kay Chopard Cohen, Martin Smith, Tom Jones and Kantara's Oliver Maerz, activity and forward progress has been less than anticipated, with IDESG's Healthcare Committee being the standout exception as it reformed inside Kantara's Health Identity Assurance working group under Dr Tom Sullivan's exemplary leadership, contributing matters of significant concern and importance to the community.    

While on the subject of Kantara's working groups, the bulk of the activity gravitated around the Consent & Information Sharing and UMA groups. On reflection, perhaps this was not surprising given GDPR enforcement from May 25th, where both Consent Receipt v1.1 and UMA are specifications that play directly to the mitigation of these privacy and compliance risks while equally asserting the individual's sovereignty over their personal data and attributes. The development and demonstration of the interoperability potential of Kantara's Consent Receipt, and the proposed Licencing Model for UMA have piqued the interest of audiences around the globe. A special thanks the Group Leadership Jim Pasquale, John Wunderlich, Andrew Hughes, Eve Maler, Maciej Machulak respectively, along with the dedicated group of corporate members Consentua, digi.me, iWelcome, Open Consent Group, Trunomi, Ubisecure, and individual contributor volunteers Tim Reiniger, Catherine Shultern, Andi Hindle, Adrian Gropper, David Turner, Thomas, Cidgem, Domenico and the many others who supported by attending calls and contributing work. 2019 planning in these groups is well underway, while other groups than became less active over the year as their work completes will be wound up.

As reported last time, Kantara started the month in Brussels with the ISSE conference in concert with our key European Liaison EEMA. We hosted the Kantara hour that started with Mark Lizar (Open Consent Group) who presented "Operationalizing privacy, with security & surveillance". He was followed by Oscar Santolalla (Ubisecure) who demonstrated the Kantara Consent Receipt in action. To wrap it up, I presented another rendition of 'The rhythm of Kantara'.  We had a pretty full room and a very engaged audience who, through their questions and discussions, caused us to run over our time allocation. https://twitter.com/osantolalla did some great follow ups.    

Kantara staff worked quickly to launch the ID Proofing and Verification Discussion Group. This Group will collect Identity Proofing and Verification Use Cases from industry that will be contributed to ISO SC27 Working Group 5 Identity Management and Privacy. This Group has received fantastic interest, despite it's promotion only being days old. Thank you vendors and experts for expressing your intention to participate. 

While on the topic of liaisons and Kantara's involvement with international committees, the twice yearly OECD meetings in our domain met in Paris where Kantara's engagement is via ITAC. I was unable to attend in person but was able to follow proceedings remotely the following week. These meetings cover future policy formation for Government in the domains of digital identity, privacy, AI, IoT and more generally the direction of the digital economy.  Kantara members in good standing can read the outcomes of the OECD meetings or contribute more generally to Identity Management and Privacy standardization in SC27 WG5 if they join Kantara's Board sub-committee. 

The final conference of the month was the Think.Digital Identity conference in London last Thursday. While this event is primarily targeted at the public sector, it offers interesting insights into the current state of digital identity in the UK. Kantara was a media partner for the event and Kantara members ForgeRock and Ubisecure supported the conference with sponsorship. Both members enjoyed podium time on panels as did Kantara.  The highlight of this conference for me was seeing around 70% of the audience raise their hands in response to my question "Who has heard of Kantara?" It was a tribute to UK members, participants and Marketing's efforts on social media that Kantara's different ethos, open community and artefacts were so well known in this challenging market.

The month ended with a Tweet to officially announce success for Kantara Initiative, Europe in a consortium together with members and friends for a European H2020 grant funding project called NGI_TRUST . This is a perfect fit for the Kantara community of experts innovators and visionaries working on privacy and trust enhancing technologies for the Next Generation Internet. Look out for the first call for proposals in February 2019.

Look past December and into January 2019, I will be in Washington DC supporting our KIPI Program partners at the DHS S&T Cybersecurity and Innovation Showcase  for the week commencing January 7th and available for meetings with you or your colleagues in the DC area. Please just Contact us to reserve a meeting time.     

The All Member Ballot for the revised Operating Procedures passed a few days before the close, which is great to see. Thank you again for your support of Kantara, even in these less stimulating administrative areas.  

It is with great pleasure that we welcome new individual member Silvia Knittl from Europe.

We also announce and thank a clutch of renewing members from the Trust Framework Operations & Assurance Program including:

  • ID.me, Kantara's first service provider carrying the Kantara NIST 800-63-3 conformity assessment Trust Mark at IAL2 and AAL2, while still also retaining its NIST 800-63-2 Mark
  • Verizon Synchronoss partner Zentry including renewal of the Trust Mark for its service; and
  •  USPS. 

Finally, Kantara Accredited Assessor Kuma.pro, renewed for a further 12 months. Thank you KUMA!

I won't have many more opportunities this year to say a great big THANK YOU for your support this past year and, on behalf of the incredibly dedicated Kantara staff team, we look forward to serving your interests again in 2019.

Kind Regards,

Colin

Around the Houses:

Marketing:

Program, Work Group and Discussion Group Updates:

  • You can always keep up with the latest news from the Work and Discussion Groups directly on the Leadership Council's Blog. See the list of public groups here.

  • As always, our Specifications, Recommendations and Reports are available for download from our Reports and Recommendations web repository - now with frictionless access.  

Events: See them all here! 

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