Identity, Security, Payments, Biometrics, Smart Cards and Authentication News

Liberty Alliance launches global e-government group

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Liberty Alliance has launched a new e-government group to speed the deployment of open identity management solutions to governments and citizens worldwide. Chaired by Colin Wallis of the New Zealand government, the group currently includes representatives from Denmark, Finland, France, Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the U.S. as well as deployers and vendors. Their goal: to create a more trusted Internet for deploying and managing public sector identity solutions.


Liberty Alliance, the global identity consortium working to build a more trusted Internet, today announced the launch of a new group formed to help governments speed the deployment of open standards and deliver more privacy-respecting and secure identity-based services to citizens worldwide. The Liberty Alliance eGovernment Group is open to all organizations interested in identifying and addressing common business, technical and policy challenges facing the public sector.

Liberty’s eGovernment Group is chaired by Colin Wallis of the New Zealand Government’s State Services Commission, and includes representation from government organizations from Denmark, Finland, France, Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as global and regional technology vendors and enterprises working in the government sector, such as ActivIdentity, The Boeing Company, Gemalto, NEC, Neustar, NTT and Sun Microsystems. This diverse mix of thought leaders deploying public sector identity management solutions will help ensure that the output of Liberty’s eGovernment group meets the real-world identity needs of governments, enterprises and citizens around the globe.

“The formation of the Liberty Alliance eGovernment Group demonstrates the wide scale demand for open and interoperable identity solutions among governments worldwide,” said Colin Wallis, chair of the Liberty Alliance eGovernment Group and senior analyst, standards, with the New Zealand government. “Liberty’s eGovernment group is bringing governments, educational organizations and enterprises together to facilitate the deployment of non-proprietary, trusted and user-controlled identity solutions in the public sector.”

Liberty Federation, which consists of ID-FF 1.1, 1.2 and SAML 2.0 specifications, and Liberty Web Services, which consists of ID-WSF 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0, are deployed extensively by governments around the world. A snapshot of some of the governments deploying Liberty’s open identity specifications is available at projectliberty.org/about/marketadoption.php.

About the Liberty Alliance eGovernment Group The Liberty Alliance eGovernment Group is the only global identity group addressing the technology, business and policy aspects of identity management in the government sector. Liberty’s eGovernment group is open to all Liberty members. Liberty membership for government and non-profit organizations is free of charge; information about how to become a member of Liberty’s eGovernment group is available by contacting Liberty Membership Director Andrew Shikiar at andrew@projectliberty.org[end] 

The Open Standard for Public Transport (OSPT) Alliance announced that austriamicrosystems has joined as a full member.

Since joining the OSPT Alliance, austriamicrosystems will have access to the CIPURSE open standard specification, leveraging its experience into embedded systems for mobile fare collection applications. The open standard promotes vendor neutrality and cross-vendor system interoperability with reduced technology adoption risks, higher quality and improved market responsiveness.

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The Smart Card Alliance Identity Council and Access Control Council have released educational resources to help individuals and organizations learn more about PIV, PIV-I and CIV credentials.

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Thursby Software Systems, Inc. has released the PKard Reader, a touch Web browser solution for the iOS that includes secure authentication to a personal smart card.

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The U.S. government’s Advanced Analytic Capabilities Subgroup of the Technical Support Working Group (TSWG) has awarded a research and development contract to voice biometrics technology provider Agnitio Corp. to speed up development and deliver an improved capabilities for voice biometrics-based mobile phone security.

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In an effort to promote efficiencies and reduce paperwork costs, three leading identity trust hubs and a certification authority have signed an agreement to promote the use of digital identities and public key infrastructure (PKI) for employees in both the private and public sectors.

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Thursby Software Systems Inc. has released ADmitMac PKI v4, the fourth generation of its two-factor security software for the Mac OS. This version supports OS X Lion and Snow Leopard.

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