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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January is 'planning month' in both our personal and business lives as we wrestle with how to enact those New Year's resolutions and reset business plans to reflect the out-turn of the past year.  

That is certainly the case at Kantara.  

While some minor refinements are already operational like the form-before-download of our frequently accessed Recommendations and Reports, the much more profound changes are yet to come.

In 2017, Kantara will pivot around a refinement of the existing Mission Statement and sharpen its focus on conformity assessment of its frameworks and specifications, with closer orchestration and re-alignment of WG and DG outputs towards its programs. While Kantara's existing strap-line 'Join, Innovate, Trust' will remain close to our hearts, you'll see and hear more of 'Invent, Innovate, Implement' which talks directly to our outputs.   

Those outputs are the world leading and thought leading specifications, frameworks, conformity assessment programs, contributions to ISO SC27, OECD via ITAC, Reports, Recommendations and more.  Those outputs are your outputs proposed by members, non member participants, directed-funds organizations and Liaison organizations as things you wanted to see Kantara do in order to improve the digital economy in the areas of identity and personal data, consistent with our Mission that seeks to build a better, safer, more private and equitable online experience for people.    

The band of member volunteers that consistently step up to deliver Kantara artifacts such as the Consent Receipt v1.0 and very soon, UMA v2.0, are often the same folks who assist the Board and staff with strategic and operational re-alignments.

We need more of you!  Please take that next step and email me at the address above, and let's discuss how you and/or your organization can help Kantara reach its goals either through membership, directed funds or volunteer resources to contribute use cases, expert knowledge, project management, Secretariat resources etc - not for Kantara's own sake - but for your organization's customers, consumers and users of its online services.         

We are receiving a lot of interest in Consent Receipt and UMA as tools in the GDPR compliance arsenal right now. And interest in our conformity assessment program for Identity Assurance that is currently deployed just in the public sector but has so much potential in the private sector. There are not many open platforms to develop industry specifications and frameworks and none as accessible as Kantara's.  That capability is at the center of Kantara's value to the industries and communities it serves.     

Take a deep breath - the 2017 conference season about to descend on us.  Let's embrace all it has to offer and in turn promote the principles that we believe in .

Cheers!

Colin

Around the Houses:

Marketing:

• We have some racy new badges, device stickers and Kantara flyers ready to go for 2017.  To Members in good standing that are holding an event where Kantara and its assets are being presented, please to take some to distribute.   

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 work is progressing well with the Code of Conduct project stream complete. The Membership/Services and Governance project streams still have a ways to go. Most of all, ID Pro needs founder seed funding to begin to fulfill its own Mission and Vision while being incubated at Kantara. If your organization wants to be acclaimed as a founding member of a new Association of Digital Identity Professionals, please email me, colin@kantarainitiative.org .  
• If you have opted to receive news from Kantara or following us on twitter @KantaraNews you'll know that the Consent Receipt is out for 45 day Public Review here .  We expect the final V1.0 to be published sometime in March.
• As always if you have a query or question, staff are only too willing to assist.  Email them on staff@kantarainitiative.org        

Events: See them here! https://kantarainitiative.org/calendars/

• One of the main themes coming from the Membership Survey in December was to increase our networking and social activities. We listened and acted upon that sentiment.  Accordingly you have been notified of 'Breakfast with Kantara'  at RSA in San Francisco, with a members only 'friends and family' evening event co-hosted in conjunction with our close liaison and friend IDESG. A social event is planned for the TIIME conference in Vienna the following week.   Stay tuned for more social events in May folks!

Cheers!

Colin