OpenID Foundation

ICF Executive Director Drummond Reed and OpenID Foundation Executive Director Don Thibeau will present the foundation’s joint Open Trust Framework at the OASIS Identity Management 2009 conference tomorrow at the NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The theme of the conference is Transparent Government: Risks, Rewards, and Repercussions.

The Open Trust Framework, summarized in the OIDF/ICF joint white paper Open Trust Frameworks for Open Government, is a mechanism that enables relying parties (the websites and services that accept open identity credentials such as OpenID or Information Cards from individuals) to verify that identity providers (the third parties providing such credentials on behalf of the individual) are certified to provide those credentials at the level of assurance (LOA) the relying party requires.

In the case of U.S. government, for example, there are four LOAs defined by NIST and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), each with its own level of identity proofing, security, and privacy requirements. With the Open Trust Framework, U.S. government websites will be able to determine if a particular identity credential meeting the ICAM OpenID 2.0 profile or IMI Information Card 1.0 profile at a particular LOA was issued by an identity provider certified to meet the U.S. government requirements at that LOA.

-Government Embraces Innovative Technology to Support Citizen Participation-

(For more details about this release, please see our Open Identity for Open Government FAQ)

Washington, D.C. - September 9, 2009 - Ten industry leaders - Yahoo!, PayPal, Google, Equifax, AOL, VeriSign, Acxiom, Citi, Privo and Wave Systems - announced today they will support the first pilot programs designed for the American public to engage in open government - government that is transparent, participatory, and collaborative. This open identity initiative is a key step in President Obama's memorandum to make it easy for individuals to register and participate in government websites - without having to create new usernames and passwords. Additionally, members of the public will be able to fully control how much or how little personal information they share with the government at all times.

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) per the federal government Trust Framework Provider Adoption Process.