Greetings folks
This is the running update from the Executive Director. Have questions or comments? Suggest some added information or edits? Contact the ED colin at kantarainitiative dot org.
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If you stand back and look across Kantara's portfolio, you'll see a kind of cadence:
Brainstorming DGs - to - Spec writing WGs - to - conformance assessment Programs.
Kantara offers the DGs to make it easy to contribute and investigate, size and frame up value propositions that industry needs.
DGs are the 'birds of a feather' that typically draw in first movers and thought leaders like you, in order to frame up WGs that bring in a community of paying members because that community wants that spec/whatever written, to solve a particular problem. And once it is written they typically want to formalize that through paid conformance assessment and approval, to delineate those who have it and those that don't, in the marketplace - for the safety, security and privacy of all users of the digital economy.
That is Kantara's business model.
Roughly 60% of Kantara's revenue comes from membership, and 40% from the Identity Assurance Program. Kantara wants to reverse that metric and in the long term, drive down the reliance on membership once a sufficient number of monetized programs can carry the overhead costs of the platform.
The Identity Assurance Program came about because of a need (in that case US Federal agencies needing to leverage private sector Identity and Credential Service Providers) which in turn brought the CSPs to join Kantara, form the Identity Assurance Working Group and to contribute to the spec (in that case the Identity Assurance Framework) which in turn became the monetized 3rd party assessment and conformance Program, for which Kantara is known globally for.
You can see glimmers of this model surfacing in discussions in the Consent & Information Sharing WG about writing conformance criteria for the recently balloted Consent Receipt, and in the Identity of Things DG....
I ask you to spare a thought for this lens through which to view Kantara, as you work through these great suggestions.
Whatever you decide, it doesn't have to be a mirror image of the Identity Assurance Program, nor using the synergies of another WG's outputs, tho' both are good beacons to be guided by.
But it does have to be a strong enough value proposition that motivates a community to come to Kantara to do their work to solve their problems.
And the revenue they bring allows Kantara to continue to cover the cost of great brainstorming DGs like the BSC DG that kick-starts the cadence of the model.
Roll on April! 
Colin
Around the Houses:
Marketing:
- We had some great press coverage during March. You can read it here:
Program, Work Group and Discussion Group Updates:
- 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 has a new logo!
that you can find on the early phase of a new website: idpro.org and on Twitter @idpro_org. If your organization wants to be acclaimed as a founding member of a new Association of Digital Identity Professionals, please email me, colin at kantarainitiative dot org. - The Identity Assurance Working Group is reviewing its new Charter and is preparing some exciting new plans to support the Identity Assurance program this year.
- The Federation Identity Working Group is poised to vote through its draft 'SAML V2.0 Implementation Profile for Federation Interoperability' - a joint effort between the global R&E community and Kantara, which is designed to converge requirements and conformance into a single easy profile.
- KIPI - the Kantara Identity, Privacy Incubator, has 3 live projects that have a potential funding value of up to US $2.4Million!
- As always if you have a query or question, staff are only too willing to assist. Email them here https://kantarainitiative.org/contact-us/
Events: See them here! https://kantarainitiative.org/calendars/
- Next up is ISO SC27 in Hamilton, New Zealand in April, then IIW and EIC in May. And stay tuned for something special for September.
Cheers!
Colin