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 the first days of July appear, with the Bank Holidays for Canada Day and Independence Day now behind us, the vacation season is already in evidence.

And that is great!

The digital identity and privacy industry is incredibly vibrant and active, with an often punishing schedule of events and related opportunities to showcase and participate across the world.

There is so much to learn, consume and ponder over, yet the time 'in the heat of the moment' is so short.  The northern hemisphere summer offers its citizens the chance to bring out those great ideas that were relegated to the cerebral 'parking lot' in earlier months and give them the due consideration they deserve. At last, there's time to reflect, refresh, review and plan. Certainly that's how we see it at Kantara .       

For you, perhaps this is the time to go and join that Kantara Work Group of Discussion Group you has always planned to, but never quite got around to doing.  There's some seriously interesting stuff going on. Take a look here .

Wherever you are reading this.. on your phone on a beach or lake, on your back porch, perhaps in the ski lodge in Australia, New Zealand or South America, I hope you take time to think about your next step in engaging with Kantara and other industry consortia that, while different in their particular focus, share a common goal towards a better place for the world's digital citizens.  

To that end, we are just so busy right now as we plan for new activities in the Fall. So if you have a few hours a week you could spare, to help us on a range of project management and administrative work, staff@kantarainitiative would love to hear from you. 

Cheers! 

Colin  

Around the Houses:

Liaisons: 

• Nothing new to report yet, but we are working on some new developments that we hope to share with you later.  
• Meanwhile take a summary look at our Liaisons here and those detail along with our other relationships of various forms memorialized here
• Further liaisons are progressing, with announcements expected soon. 

New Activities:

• Blockchain Smart Contracts had its inaugural call a few days ago, with good attendance.  
• The Identity Assurance WG is running off cycle calls to discuss and gather comments on the new draft, NIST 800-63-3. NIST joined us on our last call and encourages Kantara to offer formal comments in the fullness of time.

New Members:

• Kantara welcomes David Inglehart and JLINC Labs as new members. Thank you David, Jim, Victor and Iain! 

Marketing:

• If you signed the ID Pro pledge and want a 'I signed the pledge' badge ribbon for your next conference, or want a Kantara device case sticker, contact staff@kantarainitiative.org with your physical address details and they will post it to you. 
• Virtual's marketing team is working on a summer newsletter for your delectation. What for it coming down the pipe soon. 

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: 
  http://kantarainitiative.org/confluence/display/LC/Identity+Assurance+Framework . 
• 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.