The OpenID Foundation Board has approved the development of a new service to enable stronger partnership with "managing entities" and "accredited laboratories” that wish to deploy the OpenID Foundation tests and best practices within a wider ecosystem conformance service. This additional service is scheduled for launch in Q2 2026, and will operate alongside the existing self-certification service.

 

This strategic investment responds to a strong demand from existing and prospective ecosystem partners who believe an accreditation option will help them meet their local regulatory requirements, foster market competition for conformance testing, and incorporate the OpenID Foundation tests within a wider conformance program. The Foundation anticipates 60 countries already are or will pursue digital identity initiatives and 90 countries are or will be pursuing open data programs. Many of these ecosystems are likely to select the OpenID Foundation's global open standards and open source tests.

 

The current self-certification service will continue to operate. To date it has facilitated the successful self-certification of more than 4,000 implementations, including many vendors as well as public and private sector ecosystems in Brazil, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Giving ecosystems the choice of self-certification through either the current service operated by the OpenID Foundation and/or the managing entities and accredited laboratories will help ecosystems choose the best fit option for their jurisdiction. The OpenID Foundation is committed to ensuring its specifications, open source tests, and conformance services support the Foundation’s ability to deliver to its mission and vision, and ensuring all implementers can realize the security, privacy and interoperability benefits inherent in the specifications. 

 

In the months ahead, the OpenID Foundation will engage with pilot partners to establish and validate the new model, with plans to scale the service throughout 2026.

 

Ecosystem managing entities and accreditation laboratories interested in participating are invited to contact the OpenID Foundation at director@oidf.org for more information.

About the OpenID Foundation

The OpenID Foundation (OIDF) is a global open standards body committed to helping people assert their identity wherever they choose. Founded in 2007, we are a community of technical experts leading the creation of open identity standards that are secure, interoperable, and privacy preserving. The Foundation’s OpenID Connect standard is now used by billions of people across millions of applications. In the last five years, the Financial Grade API has become the standard of choice for Open Banking and Open Data implementations, allowing people to access and share data across entities. Today, the OpenID Foundation’s standards are the connective tissue to enable people to assert their identity and access their data at scale, the scale of the internet, enabling “networks of networks” to interoperate globally. Individuals, companies, governments and non-profits are encouraged to join or participate. Find out more at openid.net.