After a few weeks’ worth of charter wrangling, I’m delighted to announce the launch of a new Kantara Initiative work group called User-Managed Access (UMA). Quoting some text from the charter that may sound familiar if you’ve been following the ProtectServe story:
The purpose of this Work Group is to develop a set of draft specifications that enable an individual to control the authorization of data sharing and service access made between online services on the individual’s behalf, and to facilitate the development of interoperable implementations of these specifications by others.
Quite a few folks have expressed strong interest in using this work to solve their use cases and in implementing the protocol (speaking of which, sincere thanks to the dozen-plus people who joined with me in proposing the group). With a basic design pattern that is as generative as ProtectServe seems to be, and with the variety of communities we’ll need to engage, it could be tricky to stay focused on a core set of scenarios and solutions, but I intend to work hard to do just that. Better to boil a small pond than…well, you know. Stay tuned for more thoughts on how I think we can accomplish this.
If you’d like to contribute to the continuing adventures of ProtectServe, please check out the User-Managed Access WG charter and join up! Here’s where to go to subscribe to the wg-uma list, which is read-only by default, and to become an official participant in the group, which gains you list posting privileges. (In case you’re wondering, there is no fee whatsoever for Kantara group participation.)
By the end of this week we’ll start using the list to figure out a first-telecon time slot, and I’ll provide updates on various group milestones here. If you’ve got any questions at all, feel free to drop me a line.
