2019: July

Owned by Colin Wallis (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Aug 13, 2019
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 ED Colin at kantarainitiative dot org.

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Summer marches on in the northern hemisphere with a continuation of wild extremes of weather, while in the southern hemisphere, Kantara staff tell me its been bitterly cold in South America.  

Whichever hemisphere you are in, I hope that the annual pause in pace, gives you time for some rest and recovery - perhaps also some time to respond to Kantara's member survey. 

Without the constant pressure of conferences, Kantara staff use this period of the year to do all-important maintenance and updates to the website and wiki. Some of these changes are subtle but I hope you see them nonetheless. This year has been no exception tho' we have noted how much busier it is this year, with a full slate of calls for the assurance program, strategic opportunities and upcoming conference planning. 

As Staff do that, we spare a thought for our members in APAC  where it is 'business as usual'  with Australia and New Zealand both holding their respective identity conferences. 

Talking of upcoming conferences, the NGI_Trust project of which Kantara Europe is a consortium partner has been particularly busy.  The place to get the full slate of information on NGI_Trust and the other projects in the NGI program under the umbrella of the EC's H2020 grant funding initiative is the NGI Forum 2019, which will take place in Helsinki on September 25th, bringing together some of Europe’s top internet innovators, researchers and policymakers, who are shaping the internet of tomorrow. The NGI Forum 2019 website is well worth a look: https://www.ngiforum.eu/. As an added bonus for many Kantara members who will already be there, this year’s edition, will be co-located with the MyDataConference being held that week, offering opportunities to share knowledge with leading experts from a variety of disciplines, including privacy and trust, decentralised data governance, discovery and identification, artificial intelligence, and more.

Back to Kantara, its partners and its community-built specifications, there is exciting news to come in the last two weeks of the month so watch out for the announcement on social media.

Meanwhile, revel and feast on this great result from Kantara member Airside Mobile. And before you ask.. Yes. It does use Kantara's Consent Receipt specification. Who says nothing ever happens in July!

https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2019-7-23-Boeing-Introduces-Jeppesen-Mobile-QuickClear-Application-for-Pilots   

A final reminder to take a look at our 10th Anniversary celebration video, Infographic and social Wall here, straight off the homepage of the website (and scroll down).    

This month we welcome new Individual Contributor members Robert Macmillan and Mike Kiser.

Furthermore, we warmly welcome back trust marked assurance program member AthenaHealth, along with Individual contributor member Health Identity Assurance WG Chair Dr Tom Sullivan.

Please join me in honoring these new and existing members in their support of Kantara's societal purpose, its specifications, R&D Program and Trust Marked Assurance operations.   

On the community side of the house:

  • the Consent & Information Sharing WG (CISWG) continues its call for contributions (see it from the wiki landing page here) for the next build of the specification, and see the existing known implementations here. 
  • the UMA WG has its last call for contributions of UMA 2.0 profiles and extensions while also fine-tuning the business - legal framework model, while considering a re-submission to the IETF of the UMA specs as an Informational RFC in the Security Area.   
  • meanwhile the Federation Interoperability WG is meeting regularly through the summer having had acceptance of SAML2INT Implementation profile in the REFEDS community and looking to perform analysis of extended features to evolve it into a Deployment Profile with a brand name tbd, with further development of educational and assurance tools. If you are part of the REFEDS community you really should take this opportunity to join this group.
  • and last but definitely not least is the emergence of the new FIRE (Federation Identity Resilient Ecosystem) WG, to carry on the work of the IDESG, whose assets transitioned to Kantara's Educational Foundation last year.   

Enjoy August and if you are in the northern hemisphere possibly the last chance to relax and re-energize before the madness starts again in September!

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? Bella, Ruth, Armin, Oliver, Chris and myself are only too willing to assist.  Contact them here.

Events: See them all here!