2018: February

Owned by Colin Wallis (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Mar 05, 2018

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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Greetings folks

I start this as the 'beast from the east' weather bomb blasts through the UK, while our members in Austrlalia and New Zealand bask in the sunshine of one of the best summers for years (a little too hot in Australia which produces those deadly bushfires).

February has seen an unprecedented level of downloads from our Reports and Recommendations web repository.  Downloads are more than double year on year, primarily due to the strong reporting of our Blockchain Smart Contracts Report from mainstream media. While you heard it here first several months ago and also by following @kantaranews on Twitter, we re-ran the story again early in February. In just a 3 day period during the month we hit 118 downloads.  Good download numbers were posted by UMA 2.0 and Consent Receipt as well, since these tools help with GDPR compliance. With enforcement just over 3 months away, organizations the world over that have digital relationships with EU citizens are looking for products and services to help them meet the deadline.  February has been a great month for new memberships too, and we have pleasure in welcoming DataFund from Denmark, Reliable Identities from the US and Sphere Identity from New Zealand.

We started the first full week in the month at the TIIME workshop in Vienna. This event really helps Kantara value its engagement with the Higher Ed community. I believe that Kantara is the only non-profit in the digital identity space to sustain a relationship that results in such fantastic knowledge-sharing. The value of this knowledge sharing is how it draws others to Kantara who are eager to both soak up and extend those riches. That aside, for many attendees the highlight was the workshop dinner held under the dome in the renowned Natural History Museum in Vienna. Unforgettable grandeur and splendour. Later in the month, EEMA - Kantara's most active European liaison - hosted me in Brussels at its members Fireside, on a topic close to us all - the future of identity and trust. Three speakers graced us with their perspectives. The stand-out presenter for me being Bart Preneel from Leuven University. His presentation was based on a thought provoking premise that, in the future, security and privacy will turn full circle to be better maintained and assured on local devices rather than cloud based networked services.  

The early months of the year give me a great opportunity to acknowledge and thank selected member organizations for their support as I undertake my semi-annual round of 1:1 calls with Directors and Trust Marked Service Providers and Assessors.  These folks provide much of the fuel for the monetized engine room of the organization that allows many of you reading this to enjoy the benefits of low barriers to participation in Kantara's working groups and discussion groups, either through their Directors dues or support of Kantara's 'raison d'etre' - the Trust Framework Operations program.  As the only global 'non pay to play' consortium in our industry, and in support of our ethics based and mission-led culture, we should remember just how hard a business model it is to operate. It’s a model that Kantara's contemporaries won't even try. Without the Directors, Members, Sponsors and Trust Framework participants stepping up to the plate, Kantara would not exist. It's fitting then that in OWI's recent 'top 100 Influencers in Identity', 14 of them were Kantara members.  See them here in Kantara's own press release. Speaking of members, have you completed the Member Survey? Tell us what you would like Kantara to do in 2018 and beyond. 

Meanwhile, look out for new deliverables coming out of our work groups. The members-only release of the Service Assessment Criteria for the NIST SP 800-63-3 Guidelines for Digital Identity, for identity & credential service providers is imminent. Thanks again to ID.me for supplying editing resources. And UMA Legal, the sub group of UMA has produced a ground-breaking draft report that adds the 'B' (business) and the 'L' (legal) to the 'T' (technical) that comprises the essence of the UMA specification.  

If your organization has something it wants to accomplish, please don’t hesitate to contact me to explore how you can fund work or discussion group activities.

'Spring forward!'

Kind Regards,

Colin

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