Citizen Kane

This morning at Internet2 started with me and a very croaky throat talking about the work the UK federation is undertaking with the Government Gateway to solve an issue related to parental access to children’s records held at schools.

I was followed by Bob Morgan talking about the far more complex interactions with the US Government. This picked up on my post about the current administration in the US being very interested in social networking and identity.

A simple question comes out of this session – who should provide my citizen ID? In the same way that we have questioned the provision of credentials by institutions within Higher and Further education, is there any need for the Government to act as an Identity Provider for transactions currently managed by the Government Gateway or could commercial systems be used instead?

A big concern is the ability to provide complete trust in systems such as Facebook in terms of establishing the true identity of an individual. Bob highlighted that trust in these scenarios is often established via network of peers who will associate themselves with an entity or not depending on their trust in the ‘true’ identity of the persona being presented. This is very different from the trust in an affiliated institution that is established by federations – but is an interesting concept to consider.

I’ve also spoken before about not reinventing the wheel when it comes to identity assurance profiles, and it seems like the Kantara Assurance work may be worth investigating for the UK federation InCommon will be seeking to be verified via this route.