[OpenID] Japan Report 2008-12-13

[Mike Kirkwood]

Nat

Your leadership, and Japan's is fun to watch.  Feels like something big is happening.

First thing I thought though was, "Wonder what is in the U.S. groups report".

Then, thinking about it, not sure if there is a U.S. group in OpenID, or if like some other technologies that are started in U.S. assumes U.S. is represented.   Long story short, perhaps one way to spread out all of the love (and energy) of the OpenID is to form a group that focuses on U.S.   Counterbalance any U.S.-ness on the group in a way that strengthens the foundations ability to focus on it's global mission.    Realize that anyone can nominate themselves for a vote....like =Nat (+1), but thinking a few additional steps in the future might go a long way.

Interesting to think how the elections would work if every person who had an OpenID voted.  Seems like that base functionality would suggest that system that created OpenIDs provided a way to vote and provide feedback to OIDF directly.  And if every person that used it, paid $1 to the foundation for the privilege to vote and be a part of it.

Just a few ramblings, or dreams.   Just noting that it does seem key for the group to continue to make moves that stand on solid international grounds to continue the momentum.

Since we have a few extra board members, perhaps there might be a use for a U.S. group in the future, count me in if it sounds like a good idea.

--Mike
________________________________________
From: general-bounces at openid.net [general-bounces at openid.net] On Behalf Of Nat Sakimura [sakimura at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2008 6:28 PM
To: general at openid.net List
Subject: [OpenID] Japan Report 2008-12-13

Hi All:

Here is the activity report from Japan for the first half of December.
Hope it is helpful to the community as a whole. (I have posted more or less the same thing in my blog http://www.sakimura.org/en/ as well.)

I. OpenID BizDay #1

On Dec. 12, OpenID Foundation Japan had a members only seminar titled "OpenID BizDay#1", hosted by Yahoo! Japan.
BizDay is something OIDF-J is providing to the members as the benefit of being a paying member.
It is intended to be a forum for the members to share their business (non-technical) experience.

Dec. 12 was the first such occasion, and over 60 people across the industries attended it.

The agenda was as follows:

0. Opening Welcome Message: Koji Yagi, President, OpenID Foundation Japan
1. Keynote: "Next Generation e-government services and security - loosely coupled databases and Government-Industry collaboration."
     Prof. Osamu Sudo, The University of Tokyo
2. "Yahoo! JAPAN and OpenID", Tetsuya Nishimaiki, CTO, Yahoo! Japan.
3. "Developments in the U.S.", Tatsuki Sakushima, NRI-A
4. "Interoperability considerations on ID management: A Concordia Project", Hiroki Ito, NTT
5. Status report on the progress of OpenID Japan's activity. Nat Sakimura, NRI
6. OIDF-J Activity Reports, Noboru Uchiyama, OpenID Japan/NRI
7. Member announcements and forthcoming OpenID Japan activities.
 - mixi OpenID Contest, Hiroyuki Oyama, mixi
 - OpenID BizDay #2, Noboru Uchiyama, OpenID Japan/NRI

To start the BizDay #1, Mr. Yagi gave a welcome message to the members for joining this forum.
He also announced that now OIDF-J has 3 additional members: Hitachi, HP Japan, Indigo, that now it has 40 corporate members.

Prof. Osamu Sudo is a renowned government advisor and is an advisor to the OpenID Foundation Japan.
He gave us the current e-gov situation and his insight on how OpenID etc. can help the situation.

Mr. Nishimaki gave an overview on the rationale for Yahoo! Japan to invest and support OpenID, and shared the roadmap with OIDF-J members. Also, he shared business ideas that Yahoo! Japan is considering right now.
It was also good to hear Yahoo! Japan's basic privacy policy: "The customer owns the information he registered to Yahoo! Japan."

Tatsuki gave us an update on the U.S. OpenID related development, such as the Board Election, New Working Groups being formed, XRD 1.0 at OASIS Open, etc. Then, he finished off his speach with the mention of OpenID PAPE - SAML Authn Context interoperability project which is supposed to be demoed at RSA 2009. This acted as a good introduction to HIroki's announcement and introduction of the OpenID-SAML Interop Concordia project.

Nat gave a brief status report on the SIG formation etc. There has been bunch of SIG proposals and the option of starting them simultaneously were considered, but the direction now is to start one to debug the process, and then start others.

Then, Mr. Uchiyama reported on the activities of the past two weeks including Web 2008 Conference that OIDF-J sponsored.

The last portion was member announcement. There were two announcement.

The first one was the announcement of mixi OpenID Competition for students. Awards are going to be given to the teams with implementation that leverage on the social graph represented by mixi OpenID. Juries are composed of two people from mixi, one from OIDF-J, and two others.

The second announcement was the next OpenID BizDay hosted by Japan Airlines. It will be on January 16.
It will feature Japan Airlines' OpenID strategies as keynote.

II. e-Gov Guideline Creation Council - Security Working Group Meeting #3

Right after the BizDay #1, Nat rushed to this meeting to give his presentation this council.
This council is supposed to create a national guideline for e-Gov and possibly to the private sector for the usability and identity assurance. Prof. Sudo, an advisor to OIDF-J, is the chairman of this council. (Mr. Mitsushio, a member of OIDF-J, and the leader of the security working group of CIO aide of ministries, is another member of the council.)

For details, see http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/it2/guide/index.html (Sorry, it is in Japanese.)

The Agenda was as follows:

1. Opening Remarks
2. Status of E-Sigs usage
3. On the "Inference articles" of the e-sig and authentication law.
4. Technical Trends in the technologies that impacts user interface
 4.1 SmartCards and NFC phones
 4.2 Web SSO

I could only attend 4.2 (i.e., my speech) because of BizDay #1 obligation, so I cannot report on anything but my speech and discussion followed it. My presentation was on OpenID and SAML including PAPE and CX proposal, and gave several case studies as well. It was very well accepted. In the following discussion, the importance of the NIST SP800-63 style assurance framework and guidelines that can be used across government and private sectors were noted.

IMHO, this kind of activity is very important for OpenID adoption. There are many companies hesitant to become an RP because the assurance level and legal implication of being a RP is not clear. This kind of council will eventually come up with a national guideline and possibly a new law that covers these and thus make it much easier for something new like OpenID to be adopted.


III. IdCon #4

On Dec. 10, IdCon #4 was held, hosted by NRI.

IdCon is a gathering of identity engineers and architects started earlier this year by tkudo and =zigorou.
It is a grass-root activity which does not require a membership fee.
It makes a good companion with OIDF-J, which is a for fee membership organization.

IdCon #4 was a fifth such event this year. (We started off from IdCon #0, by the way.)

IdCon #4 featured following sessions:

- Possibility of Mobile OpenID, =zigorou, Cybozu Labs.
- Liberty People Service, =hiroki, NTT Information Sharing Lab.
- Recent Developments around OpenID, =nat, NRI
- Drinking Party :-)

=zigorou gave detailed analysis of the limitation of the current phones available in Japan and the impact of that to OpenID.

=hiroki gave an overview of Liberty People Service.

=nat gave an overview of the recent development around OpenID, such as the board election, new WGs, Dick Hardt going to Microsoft, etc.

One of the feature of IdCon is that it always coupled with drinking party afterwards. It is a very valuable socializing event.

The next IdCon (i.e., IdCon #5) will be hosted by NTT and expected to be around the cherry blossom time so that we can go on an outing for cherry blossom viewing afterwards.


IV. Web 2008 Conference

On Dec. 3, Web 2008 Expo was held in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan.
OIDF-J sponsored the event.

=nat gave the keynote speech, and OIDF-J hosted two sessions:
 * Enterprise OpenID by Mr. Sakamoto of Verisign
 * Internet and OpenID, Nob Seki, Vice-Chair OpenID Foundation Japan membership

In the keynote, about 250 people showed up. In the break out sessions, somewhere between 50 to 70 people were there.

To my surprise, almost everybody in the Keynote session knew OpenID, and judging from the hands raised, about 50% has one, 30% have used one, and 15% is still using it.

Seki-san asked another question to the audience in his session: "Are you planning for starting an OpenID based service?"

A lot of them were, which was encouraging.

--
Nat Sakimura (=nat)
http://www.sakimura.org/en/