This election will hit the refresh button on OIDF for 2010. I am pleased to report the “foundation” of the foundation is solid. New financial, administrative and legal measures are in place. Our budget was carefully mapped and still able to respond to the government’s open identity initiative. Because of all that and more, the newly elected community representatives will have a major influence on 2010 plans, priorities and budget. The focus on security and usability at last week’s OpenID Summit at Yahoo! and follow up discussions at the IIW reflected the key concerns of the current board. The “state of OpenID security” work Jeff Hodges, Ashish Jain and others did inventoried the security challenges we still face. Allan Tom, Breno de Medeiros and others laid out key issues in presentations on the “state of usability.”  New “product” improvement initiatives like those discussed in Dick Hart and David Recordon’s IIW session on V.Next and new “cloud” and active “client” selector demos all point to renewed energy for building on core OpenID technology.

Just as OpenID technology is evolving, how the board works must change.  Organizations that have transitioned from specification development to market adoption (the space we entered this year) have evolved their governance and membership programs to meet operational and financial objectives.  In order to improve the core technology “product”, drive RP adoption and increase member services, we need to find ways to offer more membership value and create diversified sources of income.  2010’s board members will consider how best to balance competing priorities with still unfolding value in the trust framework and certification work to do with the US government and others.  We’ve been told by experts that demand for certification is a leading indicator of the growth and maturity of a technology standard.  How we do certification will, in part, shape our future. Our discussions have us looking beyond the US government requirements to broader market adoption dynamics. The IIW community’s “acid test” greatly improved the working hypothesis that RP adoption can be best served by a synchronized and phased focus on both technology interoperability and policy certification.

In an organization like ours, leadership must come from all quarters.  As an essentially volunteer run organization, change – whether to a website page or working group – is in the hands of those motivated to act. The OpenID foundation remains a unique mash up of democracy, meritocracy and technology.  A few months ago, I took great pride in introducing the OpenID Board to Vivek Kundra, the US CIO at the White House.  I made sure Vivek knew the people he was meeting were not the usual suspects of lawyers and lobbyists, but the engineers and computer scientists who wrestled daily with the most challenging problems of internet identity.  The government adoption provided a forcing function for OpenID technology, community collaboration, and a bit of history making.

Over a glass of wine, Nat Sakimura, Andrew Nash and I were riffing on the OpenID Foundation’s “mission.” We kept pushing beyond: “stewardship of intellectual property.” “Enabling trust” wasn’t good enough but the Japanese translation of “trust” into “a feeling of safety” and being “at ease” began to capture what OpenID might someday bring to users. It hints at how important our work can be. For myself, I believe an “open” reliable, “trusted” identity standard can be the next key operational piece of Internet infrastructure. It can be to the identity layer what DNS is to the Web layer and IP is to the packet layer. In that way, the mission of the OpenID foundation and the leadership of its board can build something sustainable and important on behalf of internet users.

The contribution of your leadership on our board and active engagement as members of our foundation is highly encouraged.  Employment in any company is not a barrier. Please carefully consider your nomination and those of others.  A FAQ with specific details on the election process is available at http://openid.net/wordpress-content/uploads/2009/11/OpenID-Foundation-2010-Election-Procedures-FAQ-Final.pdf

Thanks for your support. 2009 has been an extraordinary year, 2010 promises much more.

Don Thibeau
Executive Director

Of the current community directors, Mr. Kveton has indicated he will not serve another term. Mr. Kissel, Mr. Smarr and Mr. Tom have indicated their interest in continuing to serve. Mr. Messina and Mr. Sakimura were elected to longer terms as community representatives. On behalf of the foundation, I would like to thank Scott Kveton for his important service to the Foundation and wish him well in his new endeavors.

All members of the OpenID Foundation are eligible to nominate themselves, second the nominations of others who self-nominated, and vote for candidates.  If you’re not already a member of the OpenID Foundation, we encourage you to join at https://openid.net/foundation/members/registration.

Board participation requires a substantial ongoing investment of time and energy.  It is a commitment that should not be undertaken lightly. Rather, should you be elected, expect to be called upon to serve both on the board and on its committees where the work of the foundation is conducted, and To actively contribute.  That being said however, if you’re passionate about OpenID and advancing digital identity, have the time to devote to Community service in this manner, and are a person who gets things done and works well with others, we welcome your candidacy for the OpenID board of directors. We welcome your candidacy for community board seats regardless of current or past company affiliation or employment.

When the elections process begins on the 23th of this month, voting and nominations will be conducted using the OpenID you registered when you joined the Foundation.  Log in at https://openid.net/foundation/members/ with that OpenID to participate in the election. If you are already a member you will receive an email from membership@openid.org  advising you the election is open and how to participate. If you experience problems participating in the election or joining the foundation, please send a note to help@oidf.org

Again six community directors are being elected to the board.  The three candidates receiving the most votes will serve 2 year terms and the Three candidates receiving the next numbers of votes will serve 1 year terms. In order to be eligible for election, your candidacy must have been seconded by at least three other members.

The election will be conducted on the following schedule:
Nominations open:  Monday, November 23
Nominations close:  Monday, December 7
Election begins:  Wednesday, December 9
Election ends:  Wednesday, December 23
Results announced by:  Wednesday, December 30
New board terms start:  Friday, January 1 Times on all dates are Noon, U.S. Pacific Time.

Thank you for participating in advancing OpenID.

Don Thibeau
Executive Director

Clean

Marked

The government’s effort underway is a pilot; a very deliberate beta test of OpenID technology with new integration and interoperability tasks etc. We don’t know when we will finish but we do know we will make mistakes and wrestle with usability and security issues.

We are at the beginning of a shakedown cruise on two tracks -the open source identity technologies and the open trust frameworks.  Both are parts of the GSA ICAM schema and both on the agenda of the OpenID Foundation and Identity (IDF and ICF) boards to consider.   Just as we begin technical testing with government pilots; we are also finalizing the certification or trust framework process a critical element in government adoption and seen by some industry leaders as applicable for high value commercial applications. The US government is still finalizing requirements for credible, independent and industry standards-based identity certification. Many international governments as well as US state and local governments are studying the US ICAM “schema” of technology protocols combined with industry self certification models. Identity provider certification or Open Trust Framework models have gained momentum after recent meetings with the Center for Democracy in Technology and feedback from various government agencies including the GSA ICAM leadership, NIST, NIH and the National Security Staff in the White House.

Given all the players involved it’s hard to say what will be completed when. The most valuable new dynamic is how many people and organizations are coalescing around a practical and far reaching solution set for the challenges of identity from a user perspective.  This goes beyond the tired truisms that often characterize privacy versus security debates.  There is today, a real hunger for real solutions in identity authentication. Whether you frame discussions as open government, open source or open identity; there are powerful political, public and commercial drivers at work involving identity on the web. New legal and policy discussions around open identity trust frameworks are a leading edge indication that practical solutions are in play and pragmatic (private and public sectors) organizations are involved

That being said, while the announcement resulted in approximately 30 stories, many of them were replays of the press release. I believe that speaks to two issues. The first is we announced a pilot. That means that once again, media can “wait” for the NIH implementation to go live and “see” what the results are. Second, this is a complicated story and requires more than a release to understand. The most comprehensive articles were the ones where the reporters were briefed in person.  The joint briefings by me, Drummond Reed, and the evangelism from Chris Messina, David Recordon and Kaliya, paid off in outlets like Federal News Radio, Tech Target, ReadWriteWeb, Wired and Fast Company.

Community and Collaboration
The other major take away was how well the OpenID and Information Card foundations and community leaders worked together on the initiative. The level of enthusiasm, cooperation and collaboration allowed us to accomplish much in a short period of time with limited resources. The announcement and conference served as a rallying event for the community and industry.  The government adoption of OpenID remained front and center in venues like the Tao of Attributes and the OASIS Meetings in Washington DC. See http://middleware.internet2.edu/tao-of-attributes/agenda.html and http://events.oasis-open.org/home/forum/2009

Emerging from these events is the term “OpenID” as a category catchall for the industry. This is most likely due to OpenID having strong recognition and society’s reliance on quick, sound bite, catchphrases, and the fact that OpenID has some very well-connected, well-recognized brands working on its behalf (Google, PayPal, etc) The industry, community and the two foundations will discuss how best to manage that moving forward at IIW, the OpenID Summit and boards meetings.

Outreach and Opportunity
Public relations, adoption and outreach, are processes not events. Open identity has gained momentum and is in a strong position to grow. Not only have we peaked interest with our pilot programs, but since the conference, there continues to be stories in the blogosphere, mainstream and tech media about the administration’s open government efforts.

I see several opportunities in front of us. The most obvious of course, is to continue to update the media on our progress: new pilots, new IdP’s, results from the NIH program etc. The other opportunity is a more proactive approach to communication. The open government story is in the news now. The foundations need to draft Op-Ed pieces and offer spokespeople from the community and companies to the media for commentary on the issues. We should continue to leverage our member company resources and our community talent pool as experts.  We know the media finds this story to be complicated. Let’s continue to brief them so that the next time we make a big announcement, they are ready with background information and we are ready with an open source, user centric perspective.

Plaxo is one of the earliest adopters of OpenID, allowing their users to sign into Plaxo using an OpenID enabled account with just a couple mouse clicks. Instead of requiring first-time Plaxo users to manually verify their email address by sending a verification email, Plaxo uses OpenID Attribute Exchange to verify Yahoo! and GMail email addresses without forcing users to wait at their mailbox for the verification email to arrive. Building on their successful experience with OpenID, Plaxo is experimenting with the Hybrid Protocol: A portion of new users who sign up for Plaxo using either a GMail or Yahoo account can now sign into Plaxo with their OpenID and authorize two-way data sharing of their Contacts and Activities via the Hybrid Protocol. You can read more about how this works on the Plaxo blog.

“OpenID+OAuth hybrid onboarding is the state-of-the-art for connecting users and sites across the emerging Social Web,” says Joseph Smarr, CTO of Plaxo and Board Member of the OpenID Foundation. “Google, Yahoo!, and MySpace all have massive userbases and expertise in consumer-friendly design, along with a rich set of APIs. So this is a major milestone in making the Social Web more open and interoperable.”

Another trailblazer in the OpenID space is JanRain, whose RPX service powers the l
ogin and registration flows for their customers, including Qype and MySears. Using the OpenID protocol, users can sign into RPX-enabled websites with an account that they already have. Now that RPX supports the Hybrid Protocol, sites integrating with RPX can now let users sign in with one of their existing accounts and share their Profile. In addition, these sites can also receive massive referral traffic by syndicating their user activities back to their OpenID Provider to be viewed by their friends and contacts at Yahoo!, Google, or MySpace.

Not only are we making OpenID more powerful, we’ve been taking steps to make OpenID easier and less confusing to use. The traditional OpenID “redirect” user experience has been criticized for taking a user away from the site during the login process. The OpenID User Interface Working Group has been chartered to make OpenID more user friendly, and we’re glad to announce that Yahoo!, Google, and MySpace now support the Popup UI as defined in the OpenID User Interface Extension. Sites that want to preserve their context and keep the user on their site can open a small popup window to complete the OpenID authentication flow. In order to help prevent phishing, the User Interface extension requires that the popup be displayed in an independent browser window with the address bar clearly displayed.

OpenID gives users control over their data and makes it possible for sites to build a single interface that can reach virtually all potential users. Because OpenID is an interoperable open standard, sites that accept OpenID can reuse the same interface and code to accept identities from a wide variety of OpenID Providers, including Google, AOL, MySpace, and Yahoo!. This makes it possible for virtually anyone to sign in to a site using an account that they already have.

It’s been an exciting month for OpenID, with recent news about our involvement in the Open Government Initiative, and now with support for Hybrid and the Popup UI. Stay tuned for more exciting news as we continue to improve OpenID!

P.S. If you’d like to meet the folks working on OpenID, OAuth, and the Open Stack, please join us at the Internet Identity Workshop in Mountain View, CA this November.

Allen Tom
Architect, Yahoo! Membership
OIDF Community Board Member

Today in collaboration with Vivek Kundra, the nation’s first CIO, we are announcing a pilot program intended to enable individual citizens to login to government websites with their existing accounts — without revealing their password or personally identifying information — using OpenID and InfoCard technologies.

This is an important step in the Obama administration’s commitment to open, transparent, and participatory government.

First, it acknowledges and embraces existing, open technologies, rather than inventing their own (or worse, hiring independent contractors to do the same).
Second, this comes at a critical time in the history of OpenID, of which there are now well over 500 million OpenID-capable accounts in the wild, (even if few people realize that they already have one!). Given the wide deployment of this technology, it only makes sense that the government should leverage this wide potential userbase to facilitate interaction with its citizens.

Third, it is critical for the government and government agencies to develop solutions and adopt technologies that make it easier for modern citizens to engage with them, to exist competently alongside other social networking websites.

In other words, by embracing OpenID (and InfoCard), the government is helping to further establish the value of owning one’s own identity, and of having convenient, consistent, and privacy-protecting mechanisms in place to enhance and enable participation.

To make this more real, consider booking a campground on a state park’s website: do you really want to create yet another account (that you’ll probably never use again) just to reserve a campsite? Probably not.

To make this more personal: imagine searching the National Institute of Health’s website for information for a loved one who was recently diagnosed with cancer. You’d want the technology to get out of the way and serve your goals — who’d want to register for a new account when you just want to save your search progress (say, from a library kiosk) and resume it later (i.e. from home)?

It’s cases like this that begin to tease at the value of using existing accounts for low-security government interactions (at least to start). Like email, I expect to see this start with a slow, gradual adoption, and overtime, gain momentum and relevance.

To find out more about this pilot program, read the full press release and visit our OpenID for Government page.

These companies will act as digital identity providers using OpenID and Information Card technologies. The pilot programs are being conducted by the Center for Information Technology (CIT), National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and related agencies. The participating companies are being certified under non-discriminatory open trust frameworks developed under collaboration between the OpenID Foundation (OIDF) and the Information Card Foundation (ICF) and reviewed by the federal government.

“We are pleased with the caliber of organizations who have signed on to be active participants in this initiative,” said Judy Spencer, Co-Chair of the Federal Identity, Credential, and Access Management Steering Committee (ICAM). “They represent some of the best thinking and innovation in the private sector. We also value the ongoing support and guidance of the OpenID Foundation and the Information Card Foundation in facilitating digital identity for open government.”

Since President Obama’s open government memorandum earlier this year, federal agencies have been embracing Web 2.0 technologies to interact with members of the public via means such as blogs, surveys, social networks, and video casts. Today’s announcement paves the way for individuals to use these new services and customize their experience on government websites without needing to reveal any personally identifiable information – including passwords. It also takes advantage of best practices from the private sector for protecting privacy and security, including making it easier for citizens to have pseudonymous interactions with government sites when desired

In essence, this initiative will help transform government websites from basic “brochureware” into interactive resources, saving individuals time and increasing their direct involvement in governmental decision making. OpenID and Information Card technologies make such interactive access simple and safe. For example, in the coming months the NIH intends to use OpenID and Information Cards to support a number of services including customized library searches, access to training resources, registration for conferences, and use of medical research wikis, all with strong privacy protections.

Dr. Jack Jones, NIH CIO and Acting Director, CIT, notes, “As a world leader in science and research, NIH is pleased to participate in this next step for promoting collaboration among Assurance Level 1 applications. Initially, the NIH Single Sign-on service will accept credentials as part of an “Open For Testing” phase, with full production expected within the next several weeks. At that time, OpenID credentials will join those currently in use from InCommon, the higher education identity management federation, as external credentials trusted by NIH.”

In digital identity systems, certification programs that enable a site — such as a government agency — to trust the identity, security, and privacy assurances from an identity provider are called trust frameworks. The OIDF and ICF have worked closely with the federal government to meet the security, privacy, and reliability requirements set forth by the ICAM Trust Framework Adoption Process (TFAP), published on the IDManagement.gov website. By adopting OpenID and Information Card technologies, government agencies can cost effectively serve their constituencies in a more personalized and user friendly way.

“It’s good to see government taking a leadership role in moving identity technology forward. It’s also good to see government working with experts from private sector and especially with the Information Card Foundation and the OpenID Foundation because identity is not a technical phenomenon — it’s a social phenomenon. And technological support for identity requires the participation of a broad community and of representatives of government who define the legal framework within which identity will operate,” said Bob Blakley, Vice President and Research Director, Identity and Privacy Strategies, Burton Group. “Today’s announcement supplies the most important missing ingredient of the open identity infrastructure, mainly the trust framework. Without a trust framework it’s impossible to know whether a received identity is reliable.”

Under the OIDF and ICF’s open trust frameworks, any organization that meets the technical and operational requirements of the framework will be able to apply for certification as an identity provider (IdP). These IdPs can then supply authentication credentials on behalf of their users. For some activities these credentials will enable the user to be completely anonymous; for others they may require personal information such as name, email address, age, gender, and so on. Open trust frameworks enable citizens to choose the identity technology, identity provider, and credential with which they are most comfortable, while enabling government websites to accept and trust these credentials. This approach leads to better innovation and lower costs for both government and citizens.

“Open government cannot and will not compromise either security or privacy,” said Drummond Reed, Executive Director of the Information Card Foundation. “By working with private industry, the U.S. government is harnessing the innovation and efficiencies of the open market and letting citizens choose their preferred means of engaging with government agencies.”

“This is a significant leap in participatory democracy,” said Don Thibeau, executive director of the OpenID Foundation. “Following President Obama’s directive, our government has worked with market leading companies to leverage modern, open standards to engage with its citizens. When the government adopts open identity standards and trust frameworks, the result is better service, more transparency, and greater accountability.”

· · ·

Industry Leaders Weigh in on the Open Identity for Open Government Initiative

“The joint work between the US Government, OpenID Foundation, and Information Card Foundation to enable the use of commercial identities on government web sites is groundbreaking,” said Kim Cameron, Microsoft’s Chief Identity Architect. “These pilot projects will provide invaluable insights about how these systems are actually used in practice, enabling people to build upon this seminal work both for government and private sector sites, further extending the reach of interoperable Internet identity.”

“Information Cards and OpenID technologies have the potential to improve consumer experiences online tremendously,” said Michael Barrett, Chief Information Security Officer for PayPal. “As an identity provider, we believe that this technology has enormous potential to improve the safety of Internet commerce.”

“The ability to enable individualized interaction through tools and technologies that citizens use every day represents a tremendous opportunity for federal agencies with citizen-facing missions,” said Lloyd Howell, Sr. Vice President of Booz Allen Hamilton. “Because this Trust Framework can be applied with a common experience across all federal websites, every agency can take advantage of this approach to improve operational effectiveness and reduce costs.”

“Equifax brings unmatched expertise in identity management and verification to the open trust framework initiative,” said Ron Carpinella, vice president of Identity Management, Equifax. “The opportunity to deliver our proven technology and its privacy features to the government sector is truly exciting. This pilot program is the catalyst that will enable better, more secure, and user-centric capabilities in government and industry digital services.”

“Open standards like OpenID create a better Internet for everyone. As the largest single provider of OpenID accounts, Yahoo! is eager to pave the way for further OpenID adoption. That is why Yahoo! has led the effort to make OpenID easy to use and understand for consumers around the world. And by meeting the government’s standards for security and reliability, we believe OpenID will continue to be the most convenient and trustworthy open identity standard on the Web.” said Allen Tom, Membership Architect, Yahoo!.

“VeriSign is excited to be a part of the U.S. Government’s initiative to further President Obama’s call for a more open and participatory government,” said Nicolas Popp, vice president of Innovation at VeriSign. “Based on our experience with bringing trust to the Internet, we look forward to playing a role in the development of an identity trust framework that will enable citizens to communicate with the government openly with confidence.”

“AOL has always focused on helping consumers get safe and easy access to the content and services they want online. That’s why we’re proud to be part of the government’s pilot program to allow citizens to access government websites using identities they already own. As an early supporter of OpenID, we recognize the tremendous value this service can offer consumers and applaud the government for its vision,” says George Fletcher, Chief Architect for Identity Services at AOL.

“As a champion of consumer privacy and a long-time provider of identity management, we at Acxiom are privileged to provide identity technologies to this effort,” said Tim Christin, senior vice president of Acxiom’s Identity Solutions group. “U.S. citizens can now be assured an easier and safer Internet experience with the government. ”

“It’s exciting to see the United States government embracing innovative web-based technologies to serve its citizens in a more convenient, secure, and personalized way,” said Brian Kissel, CEO of JanRain and Chairman of the OpenID Foundation. “This further validates the broad range of applications and market segments where OpenID is having a positive impact on users’ web experiences.”

“The open identity initiative illustrates how identity technologies have moved beyond theory to solve real-world challenges and highlights the potential for opportunities in the private, as well as the public sector,” noted Jeff Carter, CEO of Azigo. “Hosted Information Cards let web sites issue Information Cards quickly and easily — a key step forward for the future of digital identities.”

“Open Government represents a significant step forward in modernizing our nation’s democratic system.” said Patrick Harding, CTO of Ping Identity and ICF board member. “We are thrilled to be involved in establishing the Internet identity security and privacy standards necessary to ensuring the long term success of using 2.0 innovations to improve governmental transparency and encourage citizen involvement.”

“Citi is a huge proponent of driving alignment within the public sector to collaborate in the development of accepted standards that promote interoperability for common processes.” says Hilary L. Ward, Director, Identity Business Manger, Citi. “We are excited to be a part of this initiative and being able to bring our innovation and expertise to this program. This is a tremendous first step in creating a broader identity and trust framework that can work across applications, communities and borders to the benefit of citizens everywhere.”

“Privo is pleased to be an identity provider under the open trust frameworks to support access by any citizen who desires to interact with participating government sites, while still protecting their identity,” said Denise Tayloe, Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Privo. “We see tremendous parallels between the work we do with children and parents to verify and protect their identities using our existing, and available, Identity Card technology and the work the government is doing to interact with its citizens in a safe online environment.”

“Opening the U.S. government to direct citizen involvement using OpenID and Information Card identities is a major step for the trust fabric of the Internet”, said Steven Sprague, President and CEO, Wave Systems Corp. “Wave is innovating ways for both these technologies to take advantage of trusted computing infrastructure so OpenID and Information Card users can enjoy unparalleled access and interaction with government websites with maximum security and privacy.”

“Interoperable and trusted identities are foundations to building a smarter planet that includes the systems that run, the way we live and work as a society. In order to build such a smarter planet, it is important for governments, communities and industries to work together in building a smarter planet.” said Nataraj Nagaratnam, IBM’s Chief Identity Architect. “This initiative around pilot projects that bring these three groups together is a significant milestone in the journey of identity metasystem, and in the evolution of open, interoperable identities”

“The US Government taking real steps to adopt open technologies has the potential to enhance and simplify citizen engagement,” said Chris Messina, an advocate of open technologies and CEO of Citizen Agency, LLC. “This effort sets in motion a shift in how individuals can interact with the public sector and makes progress on the Obama administration’s promise for a more open, transparent, and participatory government.”

“Information Card technology and OpenID specifications have co-evolved at the Internet Identity Workshop since 2005. The launch of this open trust framework is an exciting major development in the evolution of an open identity layer for the Web,” said Kaliya Hamlin of Identitywoman.net and co-producer and facilitator of the Internet Identity Workshop.

“The synchronicity between the U.S. and Japanese government is quite interesting,” said Nat Sakimura, Senior Researcher at Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. “The Japanese government is going forward with DigitalCivil Life Project that also embraces open identity systems and trust frameworks. We believe they are showing the changing tide towards more open and citizen centric government throughout the world. Today’s announcement by the U.S. government is an important step towards it.”

Media Contact:
Liz O’Donnell
617-365-7172
Liz3point0@aol.com

Washington, D.C.—August 13, 2009–The OpenID Foundation (OIDF) and the Information Card Foundation (ICF) announced today they have published a white paper outlining their approach to open trust frameworks for certification under the U.S. General Services Administration’s Trust Framework Adoption Process (TFAP). Open trust frameworks provide a way for citizens to easily and safely engage with government websites: a key step in making open government a reality.

“Open trust frameworks are the way to bridge open identity technologies like OpenID and Information Cards with the trust requirements of large communities such as the U.S. Federal Government,” said Drummond Reed, executive director of the Information Card Foundation. “They are a practical solution to enabling government agency websites and applications to accept identities from non-governmental identity providers. This reduces friction and lowers costs while at the same time increases security and privacy.”

“The fact of the matter is you can’t have open government with broad citizen engagement without trust frameworks and open standards,” adds Don Thibeau, executive director of the OpenID Foundation. “OpenID and Information Cards offer an open standards approach for achieving this via the Internet and other public networks.”

The paper, “Open Trust Frameworks for Open Government” and coauthored by Thibeau and Reed, is available for download at the OpenID Foundation and The Information Card Foundation websites. More information on U.S. General Services Administration’s Trust Framework Adoption Process is available on the government’s IDManagement.gov website.

-more-

About the OpenID Foundation
OpenID Foundation (OIDF) is a non-profit open source community whose mission is to drive the broad adoption of OpenID technology. The Foundation fosters and promotes the development and adoption of OpenID as a framework for user-centric identity on the Internet. OpenID allows users to sign in to multiple websites without needing to create new passwords. OIDF is headquartered in San Ramon, Calif. www.openid.net

About the Information Card Foundation
The Information Card Foundation is an international non-profit whose mission is to advance simpler, more secure, and more portable digital identity on the Internet. Information Card technology gives users greater control over personal information while at the same time enabling more beneficial digital relationships with businesses. Steering members of the foundation include Deustche Telecom, Equifax, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, and PayPal. ICF is headquartered in Boston, MA. Visit the ICF website at www.informationcard.net.

So, how have your first months with the foundation been?

Fast paced—I am amazed at the level of activity, complexity of issues and the volume of opinions. The Foundation is evolving rapidly from within; the range of membership interest is increasing. While from the outside; the diversity of adoption and adopters is exploding.  It’s a wild ride.

OpenID is surfing huge wave of mainstream interest in social media, in open government and in industry positioning for open web realities. I’ve kept a low profile for three reasons. One: there are much better evangelists in the community than me; two: I’ve been tending to legal, financial, “plumbing” issues.  We needed to fix the “foundation of the foundation” to respond to legitimate demands from the community for more services and better tools at the same time as giving member companies the accountability they require.  Lastly, the CIO of the government called the OpenID board to a meeting in Washington to ask for our help with the President’s “Open Government” initiative. It was a memorable meeting for two reasons; it took place at the White House Conference Center and I’ve never seen OpenID Foundation board members wearing suits and ties.

What kind of unexpected challenges and opportunities have you encountered?

I knew I had a cool job when a friend mentioned NASA was using OpenID to task satellites. Like many agencies, NASA Goddard has been experimenting with the use of various open standards (Geospatial and others) including OpenID and Information Cards.  We are also hearing from state, local and foreign governments about their desire to use OpenID.  Maybe because I live in DC, I see the OIDF participation in government standards or “sausage making” as common sense.   GSA, NIST and other government forums are exactly where collaboration is expected and beneficial to OpenID.  All the while, I’ve been playing catch-up to make the Foundation run smoother.  I live in Washington D.C. and work with Board members on the East and West coasts, in Bangalore and Tokyo. These challenges come with the territory. So, I am long on opportunities and short on time.

How do you feel about the progress you and the rest of the board have made in the past months?

One clear consensus view is we want more done sooner.  It’s a good problem.  It reflects the dynamism of today’s identity ecosystem and the pressure we all feel to the have Foundation matter on issues we care about. For good reasons and bad, all too often the Foundation operated at a suboptimal level. Now we are working to improve the quality of membership services, specification processes and web tools.  The engine of the OIDF remains its working groups and committees.  We live and die by the level of community participation and the quality of Board leadership.