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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September is well and truly here with all the attendant activity that comes with 'back to business', 'back to work' 'back to school'. 

The last few days of August brought a very welcome relief to the Board and staff of Kantara as we received our non-profit status determination from the IRS. If any member wishes to see a copy of the Certificate, please let me know on the address above.

That determination meant that we could work towards unlocking our operating bank balance, cash reserves and the 2 or 3 remaining member dues, all still over at the IEEE-ISTO affiliation program.

This offers a further opportunity for me to thank all those members-in-good-standing that battled through the sub-optimal user experience to transfer their funds to us, March through May. The organization was solely reliant on those funds as well as the member renewals and new memberships for its survival over the summer while the IRS examined our accounts, and it is both pleasing and relieving to know we have that challenge behind us.

The last few days of August heralded the resumption of this year's conference circuit, beginning with MyData 2016. Videos and other proceedings will be available shortly. What a blast! The first ever major pure-play personal data conference certainly lived up to its name, with nearly 500 attendees in Helsinki's balmy welcoming late summer days. Kantara featured from the opening plenary by Antti Jogi Poikola (Jogi) and so it continued throughout the three days, with presentations from Mark Lizar, Maciej Machulak and other Kantarians Justin Richer, Jogi and myself. So many of our members, intending members and participants were there too and I thank you all for your support. The Digital Catapult team along with Mark were also runners up in the Hackathon, but I missed that. By the third day I was already across the water in Tallinn, Estonia, at the 'Future of Identity' Conference. This much smaller conference is focused around strategies to extend Estonia's eResidency Program, something that you can see I have embarked on https://twitter.com/KantaraColin. Before we leave the topic of conferences, I am happy to report that Kantara will again be sponsors of IIW as we continue to support our community - the trust anchors that underpin our society - identity and personal data. We hope to see you all there in October in Mountain View.

The pledge to further develop the notion of an association for digital identity professionals closed on August 31st with an amazing 355 responses. Those folks are now completing a survey to express their views on the future shape and form of their association, in advance of the Discussion Group to bring those thoughts to a consensus and to plan the next steps. 

Exciting times, eh? Love it!

Cheers

Colin  

Around the Houses:

Liaisons: 

• We expect to announce our next MOU in a couple of weeks. It is with the Board on eBallot right now.  
• Our Liaison with the IDESG has resulted in their mapping of the IDESG baseline requirements of the Identity Ecosystem Framework to the Kantara Identity Assurance Framework. This will enable Approved CSPs and IDP's on the Kantara Identity Assurance Program to put the requirements underpinning that approval towards self attesting compliance to the IDEF Registry. The first cross organization meetings on progress begin in September. 

New Activities:

• Look out for some new work expecting to spin up in the Personal Data space shortly.  
• An All-member ballot has just concluded on an update to the Service Assessment Criteria - the key operational document that controls Kantara's Identity Assurance Framework.  You can find the details and results here. 
• With the very kind assistance of Kantara member John Wunderlich and Associates, we have a revised Privacy Policy.  The changes are minor but I draw your attention to it and ask that you review the revision for your information. Thanks.  

New Members: Kantara welcomes new members Ken Dagg, John Bradley, Walter Hoehn and Eli Fisk. Great to have you aboard folks! 

Marketing:

• We recently received a very kind offer from loyal member, Judith Bush, to distribute Kantara promotional material at an event she is attending. If there is an event you plan to attend that could benefit from knowing more about Kantara please contact staff@kantarainitiative.org to have materials shipped to you. It would be much appreciated. 

Program, Work Group and Discussion Group Updates:

• ID Pro: As already noted above, we had a great response to the pledge, and survey responses are nearing 100 with several weeks still to go. A Discussion Group to review the survey results and plan the next activities is ready, and the links to that will be emailed soon to those who pledged.  
• KIPI R&D Funding: We are aware of at least 12 proposals submitted or in the pipeline. Next month we expect to be able to announce the successful performers from this quarter's submission round, ending in September. Keep those proposals coming folks!
• Consent and Information Sharing Work Group: Version 0.8 of the Specification has been released as an Implementer's Draft, to allow deployers to do Proofs of Concept for the Consent Receipt and feed that back to Working Group. After an initial edit by longstanding member Heather Flanagan, Kantara has contracted David Turner of Voltage Gate to lead the final editing work towards the V1.0 required for the All-Member ballot planned for early next year. Digital Catapult London and Open Knowledge in Helsinki are but two of a clutch of early deployers for the Consent Receipt, which is seen by many in the industry as a 'must-have' for GDPR compliance. Many thanks to the tireless efforts in the CIS WG and the Group leaders, Mary, John, Iain and Mark.     

Events:

• You can find the events we hope to see you at here on the events page on the website. Consent Tech at Digital Catapult in London is next up. See you there!