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."

Open Identity Trust Framework (IIW)

I think I am going to forget about "Identity Trust Network"  I like the title and work behind "Open Identity Trust Framework" being done by the folks at IdCommons at Internet Identity Workshop.  This work seems to be at a very early stage, but it is important that an open standard/framework for trust be available for the certification of identities in the cloud being provided by Identity Providers.

The concern with not having such framework would be some sort of National ID that is fully controlled by a single organization (such as the Federal Government) or some group of high profile companies.

The ideal scenario would be the use of a framework where organizations that are Identity Providers can be judged and rated on how "trusted" the services they provide are (since they certify the trust of the identities they manage).