2020: May

Owned by Colin Wallis (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jun 08, 2020
4 min read

Hello everyone 

This is the running update from the Executive Director. Have questions or comments? Suggest some added information or edits? Contact Colin at kantarainitiative dot org.

...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

There seems to be a chink of light at the end of the Covid tunnel - or at least there seems to be.

The easing of the lockdown restrictions, together with better spring-like weather, have lifted spirits even if the reality of our global situation is still months, if not years, away from something resembling normal. Even the new normal starts to seem appealing!

And, as the blame game heats up as citizenry take stock of how well or how badly its government handled the early phase and peak of the pandemic, we can collectively be proud of the Kantara members that reworked their solutions to contribute to the construction of the road that will lead us out of this crisis.  Thank you again digi.me at Director level and Folio.ID, Identos, ID.me and MIT Trust::Data Consortium with its Safepaths program, along with members Transmute, Meeco and individuals Mark Lizar and supporters Adrian Gropper all still working on various aspects of the COVID crisis in our community and others.  Another timely and considered piece of work came from Meeco, with its review of the European Strategy for Data. I strongly encourage those within and outside of Europe, to read this report and see Kantara alongside MyData in Use case #5, Data Interoperability and Reusability.  'Nurture, Develop, Operate - that's what we do'.  

May has been another busy month in all main activity areas of Kantara. Kantara Europe is neck deep in marking the new proposals seeking grant funding in the third and final call of NGI_Trust. Kantara has 38 proposals to work through out of the 100+ that were received. It's been busy also for the Kantara Foundation as its Grants.gov application for US federal funding opportunities was approved, the culmination of months of effort by staff together with Director, Kay Chopard Cohen. 

Kantara's Information Sharing Interoperability Working Group's three project streams are now fully in flight and already producing outputs. One to watch for in coming weeks is the formalization of the Blinding Identity Taxonomy into a report drawing on the original contribution by the Human Colossus Foundation. It is expected to be consumed by Hyperledger Indy Aries and others as well as Kantara.  There is a some seminal thinking being championed by Tom Jones on self issued high assurance identifiers, self generated on a user's portable device, with particular interest to the Healthcare community, so keep a watch on how that develops. While on the topic of US Healthcare, Kantara, along with other Trust Framework Operators we have a liaison with - SAFE and DirectTrust are working with partners CARIN Alliance on a template federated Trust Framework contract to pass to CareQuality the subsidiary to the ONC's TEFCA RCE (Recognized Coordinating Entity) Sequoia to help prime the Trust Framework pump in that sector.  Meanwhile UMA WG is reviewing parts of Identos's healthcare implementation with a view to potentially profiling them as additions to UMA's stable of standardized extensions and profiles. There's growing interest in developing a test harness for UMA Basics, so if you are reading this and implementing and and would be interested to know more, please Contact Us.  Finally, IAWG is developing Service Assessment Criteria for Assessors to use to approve CSP Services as being compliant with the requirements specified in NIST 800-63 C Federation and Assertions.

We are giving some thought to running our Summer Webinar series again this year. It was very popular when we last held it in the summer of 2018.  It is an ideal opportunity to showcase the work being undertaken in the work groups as well as Kantara members' implementations of them in their solutions. Interested to be involved? Please Contact Us.

Talking of Webinars, we help others out with theirs too. I am moderating a session this coming Thursday in the Festival of Identity. On June 25th, Kantara will present the shape and form of the privacy related challenges in mDL implementations in a Webinar hosted by the Secure Technology Alliance (STA).  Remember, we are circling the wagons for a workshop as a part of Kuppinger Cole's Custech online conference in October. Again, Members please Contact Us if you are interested in being involved regarding any of the topics above.  

The Identiverse Virtual agenda is out! Great to see organization member speakers from Forgerock, Hindle Consulting, Idemia, Microsoft, MIT::Trust Data Consortium and Individual Contributors Jon Lehtinen, Lorrayne Auld and Nat Sakimura. Well done folks!   

During May we welcomed new Individual Contributor members Zenia Vasquez and Tom Jones and renewing Organization member Hindle Consulting along with renewing Individual Contributor members Christine Abruzzi, Catherine Schulten, Jon Lehtinen, Mark Lizar and Martin Smith. Thank you all for stepping up to support Kantara!  

Onwards!

Kind regards

Colin

Around the Houses:

Marketing:

Program, Work Group and Discussion Group Updates:

  • You can always keep up with the latest news from the Work and Discussion Groups directly on the Leadership Council's Blog. See the list of public groups here.

  • As always, our Specifications, Recommendations and Reports are available for download from our Reports and Recommendations web repository - now with frictionless access.  

  • Not sure where to find things? Membership Bella, Ruth, Armin, Oliver, Chris and myself are only too willing to assist.  Contact them here.

Events: See them all here!