Open Trust Framework for Open Government

I was reading the Open Trust Framework for Open Government pdf released by ICF and my first thought was "why do we want government involved on this", but as I read the document it made perfect sense. And I actually agree with the concept.  Basically, the Government realizes that they don't necessarily have the best "identity data" available to satisfy industry and an "open" framework with an open market methodology satisfies their needs as a Relying Party (RP) of identities.

So, the government is not necessarily creating policy for an Identity Trust Framework, but an initial driver and our tax dollars better used... (I know, I am trying to convince myself...)

The best part is that if the government is an RP others will follow.

The other interesting fact I was not aware of, is the work of InCommon as a Trust Framework used by Higher Education mainly for federated single sign-on (not necessarily fully in the "Cloud").  This is definitely a good example (as it is stated in the document) of an "Open Identity Trust Framework."