(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — With participation from industry leaders such as Google, PayPal, Equifax, VeriSign, Verizon, CA, and Booz Allen Hamilton, the Open Identity Exchange (www.openidentityexchange.org) launched as a non-profit organization dedicated to building trust in the exchange of online identity credentials across public and private sectors, and has gained approval by the US Government as a trust framework provider.
With initial grants from the OpenID Foundation (www.openid.net) and Information Card Foundation (www.informationcard.net), the first official OIX trust framework now meets the requirements set forth by the US Identity, Credential, and Access Management Trust Framework Provider Adoption Process established by the US General Services Administration. The announcement was made Wednesday at the RSA Conference (www.rsaconference.com), an industry event that brings together some of the world’s top information security professionals.
This trust framework will let the American public participate in open, transparent and participatory government, while maintaining full control of how much or how little personal information they share with federal websites at all times.
“OIX means there is now a safe way to use an OpenID or an information card to register and login at any number of federal websites without needing a new username and password for each,” Drummond Reed, ICF executive director and acting executive director of OIX, said in a statement. “As we roll out progressively stronger levels of certification, this will empower US citizens to access and mange their tax records, Social Security records, veteran’s benefits, and many other government services online.”
Trust frameworks are a new way for one site to verify the identity, security, and privacy assurances from another site acting on behalf of a user. Google, Paypal, and Equifax are the first identity providers certified by OIX to issue digital identity credentials that will be accepted for privacy-protected registration and login at US government websites.
The National Institutes of Health (www.nih.gov) is the first government website accepting these credentials, including OpenID and Information Card logins, a capability it demonstrated today at the RSA Conference. Citizens can use open identity technologies to support a number of online services across websites, including customized library searches, access to training resources, conference registration, and medical research wikis, with strong privacy protections, all designed to ensure accessible and transparent communication between the government agency and US citizens.
“OIX grew out of a public/private industry partnership initiated by the US government at this conference last year,” OIDF executive director and OIX board chair Don Thibeau stated. “OpenID and Information Card technologies can solve the technical problem of using identity credentials across different websites, but can’t solve the problem of how those credentials can be trusted at different levels of assurance. OIX is a solution to this problem not just for the US government, but for many different governments, industry alliances, non-profit associations, telcos, academic networks, and others all over the world who need to establish trust across a wide online population.”
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