A new working group has been accepted by the OpenID Foundation (OIDF) Specs Council that will focus on increasing interoperability of authorization systems. The new working group, called  Authorization Exchange (AuthZEN), resulted from a series of conversations at the two most recent Identiverse conferences. After this year’s event, it was recognized that there was considerable interest in authorization as a topic, but that several constraints existed that were limiting widespread adoption of industry best practices. 

AuthZEN will focus on specific areas of interoperability by documenting common authorization patterns, define standard mechanisms, protocols and formats for communication between authorization components, and recommend best practices for developing secure applications.

AuthZEN will hold weekly meetings on Tuesdays at 9am PT via Zoom with the following link: https://zoom.us/j/92150123981?pwd=YnhuSXNxU2w4Z3VGc3lrUjRNSTBUZz09. The first AuthZEN Working Group meeting will be Tuesday, October 24, 2023. Co-chairs for the working group will be confirmed at the first meeting.

Those new to the OpenID Foundation and interested in participating in the AuthZEN WG, will need to complete a Contribution Agreement. Please note that you do not need to be a member of the Foundation to participate in working groups but membership is encouraged and appreciated.

You can subscribe to the AuthZEN working group mail list here: https://lists.openid.net/mailman/listinfo/openid-specs-authzen 

All working group details, including the approved charter, can be found here: https://openid.net/wg/authzen