2018: January

Owned by Colin Wallis (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Feb 14, 2018
4 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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Hello everyone,

Welcome to 2018!  As the Holidays fade from near term memory, everywhere I look across the Kantara community, I see activities pushing ahead with business plans and new initiatives.  

January heralds the start of Kantara's year as it does for many.  That involves planning and executing tactics to support the strategic and business objectives that Kantara's leadership has set itself. The year looks busy at the outset, even before any ad hoc opportunities that might arise throughout the year are considered.

We moved Kantara's first own-brand International Privacy Summit to May 22nd for a variety of reasons, and we will release further details over the coming weeks. That's GDPR enforcement week, so you can be sure it's on the agenda! 

We are coalescing around the Kuppinger Cole hosted European Identity & Cloud Conference in Munich for a combined Kantara AGM and European members plenary on Monday May 14th during the day, to give you all enough time to refresh, reset and attend the Blockchain ID Innovation night, and prior to Kantara's own pre-conference workshop the following morning Tuesday 15th that curtain-raises the formal opening of the conference.

We are looking for Kantara member sponsors and a venue in the Munich area.  If your organization can help on either or both of these, please Contact Us.

Near term, you'll see fellow Kataraians at the KNOW identity conference in Washington DC March 26 - 28, on a Kantara panel slated for Monday March 26th 2.40pm comprising members Mary Hodder, Scott Shorter, Tracy Hulver, Andrew Hughes moderated by myself, where we will discuss the topic 'Identity Service Provider Certification: Who cares anyway?'.  If you're attending, please come along and join in on the conversation. 

Just coming up in this first full week in February, Kantara will be participating in the TIIME workshop hosted by Kantara's own eGov WG Chair Rainer Hoerbe. We get together with our Higher Ed colleagues and interested others, as we work through identity related topics at the bleeding edge as well as refinements at the operational edge of the community. Wednesday 21st February heralds the first work-focussed meeting of the Consent Management Systems best practice WG, so if you have signed the Group Participation Agreement (GPA) or intend to, please do so as soon as possible so as to not miss out on anything. Later in the month, EEMA - Kantara's most active European liaison - is hosting me in Brussels at its members Fireside, a topic close to us all - the future of identity and trust.

Beyond planning events, much of January was taken up with meeting new and prospective members, participating and speaking. 

First and foremost, a warm welcome to Kantara's newest member Trunomi - known to many of you already - as a fast growing successful company in the personal data space and interested to contribute to and consume Kantara's consent-related artefacts as they are developed and monetized.  Elsewhere in the month I caught up with several members and associates at the inaugural meeting of the UK Conservative Party's Science and Technology Forum digital identity working group meeting. And both Kantara IRM WG Chair Sal D'Agostino and I were invited onto respective panels in New York and London by the good folks at Fintech start-up Rainmaking.io. Great conversations and great opportunities were to be had, to make folks aware of your highly valued efforts in developing specifications for industry adoption and conformity assesssment schemes for industry Trust Framework operations. 

We also opened our 2018 press release salvo with more Trust Framework news, this time announcing the MOU between the US IDESG and Kantara (its first and most active liaison partner) whereby Kantara approved and Trust Marked identity and credential service providers are 'pre-checked' for the majority of IDESG's baseline requirements of its IDentity Ecosystem Framework, thereby adding extra benefits to being approved under the Kantara Trust Framework 'classic' scheme.  See the press release here.    

Meanwhile, with the generous support of ID.me for supplying editing resources, Kantara is nearly ready to release the Service Assessment Criteria for the NIST SP 800-63-3 Guidelines for Digital Identity, for identity & credential service providers whose solutions are utilized by relying parties online. Kantara is extending the scope of Kantara's Trust Framework Operations Program with this foundational piece of new work. As you browse the new content on that link, please take our Survey regarding your current or planned compliance with Identity Management related standards.  Help us to help you!

And on that note, have you completed the Member Survey? Like all Kantara surveys it is short and to the point. We listen to your feedback and act on it, which is why you see Kantara's activities change and remix from year to year. Tell us what you would like Kantara to do in 2018 and beyond. 

Onwards!

Kind Regards,

Colin

Around the Houses:

Marketing:

Program, Work Group and Discussion Group Updates:

  • Wednesday 21st February: first work-focussed meeting of the Consent Management Systems best practice WG.

  • You can always keep up with the latest news from the Work Group and Discussion Groups directly off the Leadership Council's Blog.

  • Join them here
  • Kantara's Consent Receipt v1.1 has completed its public review and the working group are discussion your submitted comments.  

  • @UMAWG has released the UMA 2.0 specifications into formal publication. Kantara's UMA protocol is ranked 2nd in Kuppinger Cole's top 10 trends for 2018. And 1st on Kuppinger Cole's list? None other than Kantara's Consent Receipt.  

  • See all of our Specifications, Recommendations and Reports here and awaiting your download from our Reports and Recommendations web repository.   

  • As always, if you have a query or question, staff are only too willing to assist.  Contact them via email.

Events: See them here!