We’ve recently updated the Kantara Initiative FAQ, please visit our FAQ where we answer many questions including the following 2 questions which have come up since our Call For Participation on Monday.

Why was Kantara Initiative formed?
Kantara Initiative was formed by leaders of foundations and associations working on various aspects of digital identity, aka “the Venn of Identity,” to be robust and well-funded focal point for collaboration to address industry issues we all share: Interoperability and Compliance Testing; Identity Assurance; Policy and Legal Issues; Privacy; Ownership and Liability; UX and Usability; Cross-Community Coordination and Collaboration; Education and Outreach; Market Research; Use Cases and Requirements; Harmonization; and Tool Development.

What organizations are currently participating in Kantara Initiative?
Kantara Initiative has been co-formed by the DataPortability Project, the Concordia Project, Liberty Alliance, the Internet Society (ISOC), the Information Card Foundation (ICF), OpenLiberty.org and XDI.org. All of these organizations are now members of Kantara Initiative. The name of the organization was announced during the April 20 Identity Workshop at RSA Conference 2009, at which time the co-founders introduced key goals, benefits to the industry, and issued a formal call for participation. Many other individuals and organizations have also become members of Kantara Initiative. Kantara Initiative will release a full list of members once industry stakeholders have the opportunity to respond to the April 20 call for participation.

Do you have a question? Please feel free to contact us and we’ll be happy to help.

We’re officially live and launched, here from the RSA Conference! Brett McDowell, Liberty Alliance, was joined onstage by Eve Maler, Concordia Project; Drummond Reed, Information Card Foundation; Trent Adams, ISOC; and Nat Sakimura, XDI.org, announcing the formation of Kantara Initiative. We’re excited about the road ahead and the opportunity in front of us. Join us in shaping the future of digital identity.

Many different people and organizations were involved in thinking carefully through what Kantara Initiative would be, in order to meet the diversity of needs that were voiced through research that’s been underway since last spring. Some of these people submitted their thoughts on video, and others shared support through quotes:

“The Identity world to date has lacked a single place where a broad swath of technical, legal, policy, and policy experts can get together to collaborate and solve real-world identity and security management challenges in advance of these challenges negatively impacting the Internet. The Kantara Initiative’s timely creation and open governance model make it a very promising new organization to help the Internet community get ahead of the identity curve.”
–Matthew Gardiner, Senior Principal, Product Marketing, CA, Inc.

“Building bridges between the fragmented islands of Identity Technologies such as InfoCard/OpenID/SAML/XDI will positively impact the future internet business and personal identity management. I expect that the launch of Kantara Initiative will accelerate technological innovation and the interoperability. By expanding this effort around the world, it will help users to have an ability to better manage and protect their online digital identities.re internet business will be positively affected by jumping the technology barrier to derive the maximum benefit from authentication technologies such as OpenID. I expect that the launch of Kantara Initiative will accelerate technological innovation and enhancement of interoperability. By expanding this effort around the world, it will help provide more users with the ability to better manage and protect their digital identities online.”
–Nat Sakimura, Senior Researcher, Nomura Research Institute, Ltd, and Vice Chairman, XDI.org

“My interest and support for Kantara Initiative is based on the promise of interoperability and longer term convergence across the vast identity ecosystem to enable holistic identity management. This will in turn drive adoption and lower costs of both supporting applications and implementations and drive ease of use for the end user.”
–Ken Salzberg, Director Technology Management, Systems Technology Lab, Intel

“The problems we face are not just technology, but rather a combination of business policy and privacy requirements, balanced against interoperability, usability, as well as technology harmonization. All of these issues need to be addressed for identity-based solutions to succeed and for deployers to leverage their benefits. Kantara Initiative is uniquely positioned to address these needs.”
–Roger Sullivan, Vice President, Oracle Identity Management

“The promise of the Kantara Initiative is that it will weave together multiple identity technologies into a coherent whole. This is greatly needed. The Information Card Foundation hopes to collaborate closely with Kantara, especially on the use of Information Cards as a unifying user experience metaphor irrespective of the underlying technology or protocol.”
–Paul Trevithick, Chair, Information Card Foundation