Exploring User Centric Identity

19-21 June 2006 Netamia attended the Identity Mashup Conference, a three-day event hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

The goal of the conference was to explore the role of identity systems (tools that let users and merchants know whom to trust on the web) in furthering or inhibiting privacy, civil liberties and new forms of civic participation and commerce.

Attendance included around 100 professionals with a mix of technical and legal background. Participants were enlisted from US government agencies, universities, large corporations as Microsoft, IBM, Novell, Verisign, and Oracle as well as small upstart companies as Netamia, Sxip, Netmesh and Opinity.

With particular reference to the failed Microsoft Passport project there was a general consensus among the participants (also Microsoft) that a single or a few large companies will not be able to achieve a monopoly for Identity Management. Nor is it likely that Governments will be able to acquire that role.

The increasing focus on identity as a User-centric issue, will enevitably foster a host of competing and collaborating "Identity Providers" and "Identity Brokers" providing independent 3rd party validation of various identity related attributes. This may include basic personal data, contact information as well as more or less complicated "reputation" functions.

Netamia intends to participate in the development and promotion of several of the initiatives launched and presented during the conference. We are looking forward to reveal some results of this work during the fall of 2006.

Andy Oram from O'Reilly has compiled a comprehensive article on Identity Management based on the conference presentations and discussions with the participants.

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