2017: December & the year in review

Owned by Colin Wallis (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jan 01, 2018
6 min read

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 at kantarainitiative dot org.

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Happy Holiday Greetings Kantara Community!

I hope that for all of us everywhere, there has been at least some respite from the pressures of work that the year-end can offer, even if we are not directly involved in those festivities ourselves.

The Gregorian calendar is used by many, including Kantara, to close the year, review & reflect, and open the New Year’s activities.  What a year 2017 has been for Kantara!

It’s incredible what a small team of motivated and dedicated leaders and volunteers across 12 working and discussion groups can achieve, supported by equally motivated and dedicated staff.

A shout-out too, to our Director sponsors CA Technologies, digi.me and ForgeRock that supported us with member breakfast events earlier in the year, ForgeRock and Saviynt for their sponsorship of the Consumer Identity World Tour pre-conference series, ID.me for sponsoring the editing of Service Assessment Criteria for Kantara’s new all-important 800-63-3 scheme, and thanking in advance iWelcome and digi.me sponsoring the CMS work group in 2018.

Kantara's revised Mission Statement - the global consortium improving trustworthy use of identity & personal data through innovation, standardization and good practice - developed by the Board & Leadership Council was released in Q1 2017 as the underpinning driver for Kantara's deliverables. And Wow, did we deliver...

I was reminded of just how much we have achieved when I answered this statement a few days ago from a prospective member not connected with Kantara; 'I haven’t seen a lot of activity out of Kantara lately.  Please fill me in if I am mistaken'.  So I listed everything we had done, and surprised even myself!

Take a look at this – by any non-profit trade association’s criteria in any industry anywhere in the world, it’s an impressive list of achievements.

Publications: The following 7 and earlier publications were downloaded over 700 times - demonstrably proving Kantara's contribution to the global identity and personal data communities - members and non members. 

  • UMA 2.0 finished development and just completed its 2nd 45-day IPR & public review before minor edits and official publication.
  • Consent Receipt v1.0 was published, v1.1 developed completed and is nearing the end of its 45-day IPR & public review period, with official publication in March.
  • SAML V2.0 Implementation Profile for Federation Interoperability finished and completes its 2nd 45-day IPR & public review on January 1st, superseding the eGovernment Implementation Profile V2.0 of 2011.
  • Report completed by the eGov Working Group on the 'Code of Conduct for Relying Parties for services to Government' is being prepared for official publication. 
  • Report completed and published by the IRM Working Group on 'Refining the Design Principles of Identity Relationship Management', building on implementation experience from the original report a year or so earlier with a similar name.  
  • Report completed and published from the Blockchain and Smart Contracts Discussion Group. Here is a quote from a large US federal agency employee. "It was a pleasure to read, both well written and informative. (I’ve been reading a lot of BAD blockchain papers and articles lately;-)). The discussion of Smart Contracts is the best I’ve read. I’m going to pass it around to try to counter all the crazy Smart Contracts will solve all our problems talk going around the [entity redacted ] right now".
  • Kantara's Service Assessment Criteria for 800-63-3 at IAL2 & AAL2 for future conformity assessment developed and currently out for 45-day IPR & public review.

New Work Group: Reflecting the needs of industry service providers to be in the best possible position for GDPR, ePrivacy and PSD2, Kantara launched the Consent Management Systems Best Practice work group last month, with the generous sponsorship of iWelcome and digi.me.

Events:  Kantara actively participated in and sponsored, or supported its members at the following 20 events;

  • Real Consent and GDPR readiness, London
  • RSA, San Francisco (members breakfast)
  • TIIME Workshop, Vienna
  • Identity & KYC Summit Europe, London
  • ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 Plenary and Working Group Meetings, Hamilton NZ and Berlin, via Kantara's Category C liaison with Working Group 5 
  • Internet Identity Workshop, Mountain View
  • European Identity & Cloud conference 2017, Munich (pre-conference workshop & members breakfast)
  • OECD Paris, meetings on the digital economy, internet security and privacy policy development via Kantara's membership of ITAC that supports OECD nation members
  • Identity North, Toronto
  • Cloud Identity Summit, Chicago (pre-conference workshop)
  • EEMA conference, London
  • MyData, Helsinki
  • Consumer Identity World, Seattle (pre-conference workshop and evening reception)
  • GDPR Summit, London
  • Identity & Access Management Conference, Belgium
  • Consumer Identity World, Paris (pre-conference workshop and evening reception)
  • Consumer Identity World, Singapore (pre-conference workshop)

Incubators and Innovation projects via the Kantara Identity & Privacy Incubator (KIPI) program:

  • Digital Identity Professionals (ID Pro) incubated to self-sustainment June 2017 - the world's first and only industry association for digital identity professional equivalent to the likes of IAPP, ISACA, ISC2 etc. 
  • Mobile Device & Attribute Verification (Lockstep Technologies) via KIPI with partners DHS S&T and Rutgers University. Kantara takes small project admin %age. Expected 3 year value $800,000.
  • Derived Credentials via NFC (Exponent Inc) via KIPI with partners DHS S&T and Rutgers University. Kantara takes small project admin %age. Expected 3 year value value $800,000.
  • ERASMUS federation for OpenID (Gluu Inc) via KIPI with partners DHS S&T and Rutgers University. Kantara takes small admin %age. Expected 2 year value $400,000.

Europe-based Entity:

Kantara Initiative, Europe founded January 30th in Tallinn, Estonia operating as a non-profit licensee of Kantara Initiative Inc, but legally and financially separate from it with servers located in Frankfurt.  The entity is in a consortium with 4 other partners to bid for H2020 funding to develop an open-source Privacy architecture, a huge submission effort over the summer with a total value of over 3M Euro.   

Revamped Trust Framework Operations program: 

In its final development phase, Kantara is extending the scope of Kantara's Trust Framework Operations Program, given the scarcity of 3rd party conformity assessment and Trust Marks for NIST 800-63-3 Identity Guidelines. 

As you browse the new content there, please take our Survey regarding your current or planned compliance with Identity Management related standards: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5YZ3Y9X 

Revamped Policies and Membership Structure (effective January 1st):

With all the above activities in flight, it's amazing that leadership and staff managed to refine our mission, vision, and strategy, further develop Kantara's IPR policy, do a minor revision of the ByLaws, and undertake a major overhaul of the Membership Structure to make it simpler, and fairer, resulting in some downwards adjustments in member fees along with some increases. Online joining by credit card is being prepared for launch early in the New Year, to supplement PayPal and invoice options. 

How do you think Kantara performed in 2017? Do you want more things like those above in 2018? Or different things?  Please take the short member survey here:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2017KIMember

New Year is the time for Resolutions and Wishes - both personal and professional. My New Year's Wish for Kantara in 2018 is for more existing members driving more membership and action - to step up and take leadership responsibility in Groups and Projects - and that larger private and public sector organizations join and sponsor, rather than passively download and develop in isolation or join one individual for $150 & consume Kantara's artefacts while giving little or nothing in return. It remains to be seen whether my New Year's Wish will come true.  Regardless, I can assure you that my New Year Resolution is to prioritize member, partner and liaison value, while remaining committed to Kantara's core mission - improving trustworthy use of identity & personal data through innovation, standardization and good practice. Kantara holds steadfastly to the principle of giving back control of personal data to its owner, as it develops easy-to-deploy tools with, by and for industry service providers.  'Others talk - we do'.

2018 will be a challenging year for the industry, perhaps moreso for Kantara than others in continuing to operate to high ethical and societal standards in the face of increased regulation, cost and (often self serving) ecosystem fragmentation. Our two January events are in the UK - an ecosystem of tightly connected players but nonetheless one that Kantara's specifications, development platform and member services are highly complementary.  Here's to seeing you at Kantara's first hosted conference in London, the International Privacy Summit, January 29th!  

Can't make it? Then see us and register at TIIME in Vienna, Austria, Europe's IIW February 5-8th 2018.

Happy New Year!  In my last days in Melbourne before heading back to the colder climes of the northern hemisphere, you can be sure I'll be raising a glass to salute the dedication from my fellow contractors Executive Program Manager Ruth, IT & Web Developer Oliver, the Staff at Virtual Mgmt Inc, President Allan, his fellow Directors and the ARB Sub Committee that meet weekly to govern the Assurance program at the highest levels, LC Chair Andrew and his Group leadership, all Group contributors and participants and all of you reading this. Please build & develop your support for Kantara, so that Kantara may be honored to build & develop its support for you. 

Kind regards

Colin

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