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@kantarainitiative.org
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As I write this in early August, summer lingers in the northern hemisphere. And as folks start to return to work in earnest, the email in-box and the calendar is filling up. Whether it's skiing in the southern regions or bathing at the beach in the north, I do hope you are getting some work-life balance. We don't get so much of that here in Kantara, but we try..
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We have used the quieter pace of summer to review various aspects of the organization, and in particular the value proposition to our members. Members are the life-blood of the organization because without them, we don't have the funds to support the platform and to offer our services to the community such as the ID Assurance Program.
The EU Referendum in the UK at the end of June brought a surprising result, and as a consequence, Kantara has been looking across the EU Member States to determine how to optimise its position in relation to the location of its members, and has engaged some members in that process. We expect to announce an update on our plans later this year.
While some Working Groups have taken a breather over the summer, others have been pushing hard to get their deliverables nailed. It was great to see the Consent and Information Sharing Work Group announce the v0.8 draft Consent Receipt Recommendation approved by the WG to allow implementations to proceed late August and through September at Digital Catapult in London, MyData in Helsinki and expected also on a trial site at Kantara.
Summer also gives folks a chance to push forward with new ideas and innovations that need a platform to further develop. Every week in July has seen a new proposal presented to Kantara for a Work or Discussion Group, which portends for a very exciting future. What is so great about these proposals is the way they relate nicely to the existing work underway and have a service component outcome for the benefit of Kantara and the wider community.
We received a positive response to our call for volunteers to help Kantara drive its mission forward, and it's my pleasure to inform you that we have retained an intern for the remainder of the year and partly into next. Eric Pridgen is a senior, Mathematics major at Winston-Salem State University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and also undertakes research experience at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In due course some of you may encounter him in Working Group and Discussion Groups where you are active.
Colin
Around the Houses:
Liaisons:
- Nothing announceable, but progress is being made (albeit slower over summer) and we hope to share more with you later.
- Meanwhile take a summary look at our Liaisons here along with our other relationships of various forms memorialized here.
New Activities:
- User Submitted Terms, a sub-group of the Consent and Information Sharing WG is gaining significant interest from the personal data and privacy. Take a look, here. Many thanks to Mary Hodder for her leadership skills here and on completing her successful Chair rotation on the CIS WG.
- An RFP will be released shortly for a tidy-up of some aspects of the Service Assessment Criteria, a critical document in the ID Assurance Program. If this is of interest to you, keep an eye on the website.
New Members: Kantara welcomes Ian Glazer and Patrick Essien as new members. Thank you Ian and Patrick!
Marketing:
- I do hope you found the summer newsletter sent to you recently, a useful read. We certainly welcome your feedback at staff@kantarainitiative.org .
- We have a new portable banner which will start appearing at events we support. Its first outing will be at the MyData conference in Helsinki at the end of August. At this show, attendees will see a demonstration of the Consent Receipt in action. Stay tuned on social media!
Program, Work Group and Discussion Group Updates:
- CIS WG: The Consent Receipt spec is now in the hands of an external reviewer, in preparation for release later in the year.
- Identity Assurance Program: Ruth Puente, Program Manager recently circulated a note about updates to the Assurance Assessment scheme document, which explains how the Assurance Program operates. This AAS revision introduces a specific process which CSPs and their selected Assessors shall follow when Un-scheduled Assessments are required as a result of changes to a CSP and/or its Approved service(s), or when the ARB requests such an assessment, both of which are addressed in §4.7. AAS v5.0 is attached and available at the Kantara website:
- Smart Contracts and Blockchain DG: As noted above, this ground breaking work takes some elements of the Common Accord development, together with Distributed Ledger Technology to put dynamically 'encode' contracts and memorialize them on the Blockchain.
Events:
- You can find the events we hope to see you at here on the events page on the website.