DEIA Charter

Owned by Lynzie Adams
Last updated: Mar 21, 2024 by Jordan Burris
2 min read

Approved: March 20, 2024

Sub-Committee Name: Kantara Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) Board Sub- committee

PURPOSE: Identity is foundational for engaging in an increasingly digital society. As such, solutions must be accessible and designed to enable the equitable exchange of trust across the entire digital ecosystem. The purpose of this sub-committee is as follows:

Specifically, the sub-committee will execute on the following:

  • To champion DEIA within the digital identity ecosystem and the changes needed across the identity industry to promote more equitable outcomes across service providers and standards bodies.

  • To establish common terminology and taxonomy for DEIA specific to digital identity to harmonize cross-industry dialogue.

  • To develop a methodology that enable relying parties to better measure identity outcomes, impacts across different demographics, and overall return on investment (ROI) for adopting more inclusive practices.

  • To facilitate the creation of recommendations or a maturity model for enabling more equitable outcomes for digital identity. This includes practices for identity verification/proofing, authentication, etc.

  • To develop a framework for assessing provider conformance and ability to enable more equitable outcomes for digital identity.

Specifically, the sub-committee will execute on the following:

  • Developing artifacts to document consensus driven terminology and taxonomy for digital identity DEIA

  • Developing service provider maturity models for DEIA and associated assessment criteria to demonstrate conformance

  • Developing calculators and approaches for measurement of effectiveness and ROI for digital identity DEIA

  • Developing and maintaining liaisons as appropriate with external bodies and other Kantara groups

  • Developing educational materials in support of the overall sub-committee effort

  • Overseeing the contribution of DEIA related inputs to a standards-setting organization

SCOPE: The outputs of sub-committee’s work must meet the following requirements:

  • Allow an individual to have a pathway to engage in digital services regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, disability, or socioeconomic class

  • Allow transparency into digital identity practices in support of audit and monitoring activities

  • Support the notion of interoperability across solution providers based on common standards

  • Simple to understand, implement in an interoperable fashion, and deploy on an Internet-wide

    scale

  • Support the notion of being vendor agnostic and neutral to support adoption across a wide

    range of deployment models.

  • Developed in an agile process that can evolved based on emerging trends and changes in law, standards, and policy.

LEADERSHIP: At the time of this charter’s creation, following are the members of the leadership team:

  • Chair: Jordan Burris, Socure & Kantara Board of Directors

  • Vice-chair: Peter Davis, Airside / Onfido & Kantara Board of Directors

  • Editor: Karyn Bright, Kantara Initiative

AUDIENCE:

The anticipated audience for the documents produced by this sub-committee includes service providers, relying parties, standards bodies, and policymakers. The group also anticipates gathering input from individual users of online services and civil liberties organizations to respond to their needs and preferences.

DURATION:

This sub-committee is an ongoing effort; it anticipates developing a draft set of common terminology for digital identity DEIA by end of calendar year 2024 along with a draft methodology for evaluating ROI.

PR POLICY: Kantara IPR Policy: Default Option Non-Assertion Covenant

RELATED WORK AND LIAISONS: This sub-committee has a number of dependencies on, and shared goals with, the output of other efforts. The Kantara groups and external efforts with which this sub-committee intends to liaise informally include (but are not limited to):

  • Women in Identity

  • FIDO Alliance

  • Better Identity Coalition

  • National Institute of Standards and Technology

  • Kantara Identity Assurance Working Group (IAWG)