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<p class=MsoNormal>On behalf of the Board of Directors of the OpenID
Foundation, I want to thank John Bradley for his leadership in the technical
development of US government support for OpenID. John worked with Andrew
Arnott, George Fletcher, Johnny Bufu and many others in a months-long
collaboration on the GSA profile for OpenID. Their work reflected a
community-wide contribution to OpenID and an important step forward for the open
identity ecosystem. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>CIO Vivek Kundra and government technical teams made sure to
mention how impressed they were by the interchange with their counterparts in
the private sector. They were amazed the profile could be finalized with so
little friction from contributors from competing companies. Government
officials from the White House, the GSA, OMB, DOD and Homeland Security went on
record at Tim O’Reilly’s Gov 2.0 and other public forums last week
in support of the open source technology that enabled this next pilot phase.
Getting identity providers and OP's ready hasn’t been easy as the profile
kept moving as government processes kept intruding.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>The government’s request of the foundation was a
forcing function that drove collaboration and resource sharing with InCommon
and the Information Card Foundation. To be sure the integration testing exposed
challenges in technical documentation of libraries and best practices.
The expansion of pilots in the next phase of this “mother of all use
cases” will continue the stress test. It will force the open
identity community to engage on how best to mature open identity
interoperability and how to best resolve well known challenges in usability,
security and privacy.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Press releases are rarely a source of truth but the public
reaction to the Government’s support of OpenID points to its key role in
the evolution of open identity collaboration. Many saw a small piece of
history made in a user centric and federated identity adoption curve.
Pilots and beta tests are inherently risky; especially in the next public, high
profile, path forward with the government. Public private partnership is
hoped for but seldom seen so clearly in the progress made last week. The
OIDF and ICF foundation boards continue to work together. All that was at play
in the US CIO public thanks for a small but significant step toward open
identity’s contribution to open government. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='color:#1F497D'>Don Thibeau<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='color:#1F497D'><a href="mailto:don@OIDF.org">don@OIDF.org</a><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Executive Director<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>The OpenID Foundation<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><a href="http://openid.net"><span style='color:blue'>http://openid.net</span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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