Now I’m testing HBlogger. We’ll see how it compares.
[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]

Thank you all who responded with suggestions for this project. I appreciate you taking the time to share your ideas. One very positive outcome of this little experiment is that I have been asked to share the results of this project at the JavaOne conference in May. I will include anyone who shares insight on this subject with me in the bibliography of my presentation at that conference, and will publish the paper on this blog.

So now, in the participatory nature of this project, here is the second draft of my list of Identity Trends. Based on feedback, I have separated the trends into three categories. As before, I’d welcome any and all feedback.

Market Drivers

1. Enterprises will increasingly seek to leverage digital identities to delivery highly personalized services to increase revenue and increase customer loyalty
2. Governments will increasingly use digital identity methods to enable citizen-government interaction and to track citizen location and behavior
3. The rising rate and severity of identity theft, coupled with accelerating concern over privacy rights, will cause consumers to demand stronger control over their own identities.
4. Governments will increasingly impose regulatory controls on the use and protection of digital identities
5. Enterprises and government agencies will increasingly seek to leverage digital identity methods to increase regulatory compliance, reduce operational costs and improve information security

Technology Trends

1. User centric identity will grow in prominence for both consumer and enterprise applications
2. Customer-focused commerce models, including VRM, will emerge
3. Identity federation among disparate organizations will be implemented on a broad scale
4. Components in Identity product and service suites will become more strongly integrated
5. Identity functionality is increasingly delivered as sets of services, rather than monolithic applications
6. Standards-based interoperability among multiple products from different vendors will be increasingly demanded by customers
7. Policy driven methods will be increasingly used to govern the entire Digital Identity lifecycle
8. Physical or virtual consolidation of customer Identities will increasingly enable vendors to have a single view of their customers
9. Identity-enabled access control at the network and device layer will increasingly complement access control at the operating system or application layer

Deployment Trends

1. The scope of Identity Management strategies will increasingly expand beyond operating systems, applications, directories and databases to integrate network access control and physical access control
2. Autonomous organizations offering Identity services, both within and outside the enterprise, will become more prominent
3. More template-driven rapid implementation methods are being used to reduce Identity Management implementation time
4. Business processes will increasingly be engineered to integrate Identity from the start, rather than attaching Identity after the fact

As always, thanks for your valuable assistance.

Technorati Tags: Identity,
Digital Identity,
Identity Management,
Identity Trends

In a recent post, I mentioned the Identity-enabled mashup Firefox plugin (how’s that for a mouthful) blueorganizer, and promised to report back. Alas, it interfered so much with the Wizz RSS reader I use and with the rendering of my blog that I gave up before I found a compelling reason to keep it around. Others will have to sing its praises … or otherwise.

Technorati Tags: Identity,
Digital Identity,
Identity Management,
Mashup,
blueorganizer

I often get the feeling that I’m always a step or two behind leading edge wisdom. I recently blogged about mashups. I’m sure that many of you who read that article had deep thoughts about mashups long before I did. I’m still learning.

But since my last mashup post, I realized that I had yet to find a mashup that is really Identity enabled. All mashup sites I had visited had no notion of who I was or what I wanted out of life. But I realized that four out of the five mashups I proposed in my previous article would require integrated Identity. I spoke of “my health insurance plan,” “articles I read,” “my current business travel itinerary,” and “customers for which Iam responsible.” Without realizing it, I had made a case for producing Identity-enabled mashups.

In the spirit of learning what others may have been thinking about Identity enabled mashups, I revisited the programmableweb mashup site again this morning. It is fun just to poke around and find new mashup ideas that people have implemented. I particularly like the new Detroit Tigers Map – perhaps because I’m not a big Yankee’s fan, despite Derek Jeter’s fantastic performance in game one of the playoffs.

On a whim, I visited the intersection of Google and YouTube on the mashup matrix. I figured that if Google and YouTube can mashup their corporations, I might find something of interest. Voila! I found an Identity enabled mashup, blueorganizer, a Firefox extension that claims to “help you personalize your web experience based on what you already like. It harnesses your information to help you discover relevant new information and save time.”

Note the emphasis on “you.” When I downloaded and installed the extension, the first thing I was asked was to establish an account. Blueorganizer is supposed to help me find things I really like, based on my browsing experience. It should be interesting to see how it really works over time.

The concept of mashups is intriguing because multiple services are combined in unique ways to provide a richer user experience than an un-integrated string of services could. Identity enablement is intriguing because it allows services to be tailored to meet individual needs. Combining identity with composite services provides a powerful means of delivering online value to individual users.

Identity-enabled mashups is a concept whose time has come.

Technorati Tags: Identity,
Digital Identity,
Identity Management,
Mashup,
blueorganizer

On May 5, 2006, Eric Norlin created a minor controversy by listing “The top 10 most important people in Identity.” Was he correct? Do you have a different opinion?

At the Burton Group Catalyst Conference last year, Mike Neuenschwander referred to people in the Identity industry as the Identerati. The day after I blogged about Mike’s comments, Dan Blum registered the domains identerati.com and identarati.com and their derivatives, ostensibly to protect the name of his blog.

More recently, I blogged about Identity Characters who participated in the Internet Identity Workshop.

I find it fascinating to study people who work in the Identity industry – the Identarati. We can learn much from each other as we all seek to advance the state of the art in this industry.

I cannot hope to meet or even read about each of the myriads of people who are contributing to this dynamic industry. However, as a student of Identity Management, I am constantly learning about new people and listening to what they have to say.

I have decided to share my list of the Identarati with you. The Whodentity? list isn’t a top ten list. It is simply a compilation of links to many of the interesting people I have discovered in my quest of Discovering Identity.

You can reach this page via the Whodentity? link underneath my photo on each blog page, or directly via www.whodentity.com

If you would like to nominate yourself or someone else you know for this list, please send me an email via =MarkDixon. I’d be delighted to learn about you and what you have to say. For those of you already on the list, please let me know if I need to update your information.

Technorati Tags: Identity,
Digital Identity,
Identity Management,
Whodentity,
Identarati

Terry Sigle … it was your night! Dirk Nowitzki hit a career playoff high 50 points to lead the Mavericks to a 117-101 win over the Suns, taking a 3-2 lead in the Western Conference Championship series.

Can’t wait to see the next game in Phoenix on Saturday !

Technorati Tags: Phoenix Suns,
Dallas Mavericks,
NBA

In yesterday’s CNet News.com piece, “Perspective: Do we need a national ID card?,” Robert Vamosi reviews some of the challenges in physical and political challenges associated with implementing a national ID card. One of Robert’s more interesting points:

“With all the talk of creating a national ID card or standardizing U.S. driver’s licenses, there has been very little action on something that would improve security–creating a united crime database in the United States. You want security? Let’s start by tracking convicted felons. Here’s an excellent test bed to see whether such ID systems really work. It’s sad that data warehouses such as ChoicePoint know more about you and me than cops know about convicted felons on the street.

“If we can’t yet sync the names of criminals wanted in one state with people arrested in another state, it seems to me that we shouldn’t be so eager to start tracking honest, noncriminal citizens.”

Well put!

Technorati Tags: Identity,
Digital Identity,
Identity Management,
Real ID Act

I learned a new word today: Grandiloquent: “a lofty, extravagantly colorful, pompous, or bombastic style, manner, or quality especially in language.”

This came from the Wikipedia description of methodology: “In software engineering and project management, ‘methodology’ is often used to refer to a codified set of recommended practices, sometimes accompanied by training materials, formal educational programs, worksheets, and diagramming tools. While these would be more accurately referred to as methods, the word methodology is more grandiloquent.”

So, let’s favor qrandiloquence today and talk about project methodologies as they apply to implementing Identity Management systems. For the purpose of this discussion, I propose this definition for Methodology: “a common framework or process to enable high quality delivery and sustenance of information technology solutions.”

Methodologies do not guarantee success. They cannot automatically make a substandard delivery team rise above their own inadequacies. However, a good methodology, executed by a competent team, can provide repeatability and predictability to an implementation project.

The focus should be on both delivery and sustenance. It does little good to deliver a system that no one can operation. It also does little good to deliver an inferior quality system to a great operations team.

Teams who use poor project methodologies or fail to follow a good one can:

• Underestimate the complexity of Identity systems
• Fail to highlight and enforce critical dependencies
• Inadequately manage change
• Fail to discover problems as they arise

So, what should be done?

• Select a systems integration partner who has a good methodolgy and a good track record of using it.
• Make sure the methodology accomodates Identity Management, with its many stakeholders and many moving parts.
• Work with your partner to adapt that methodology as necessary to accommodate your requirements.
• Use excellent people. Don’t try sweep ineptitude under the methodology carpet.
• Don’t go overboard. Focus on the end goal, not just the process.
• Stick with it. Be consistent in your adherence to the methodology you choose.
• Document lessons learned. Learn from both your mistakes and successes.

So, whether you describe the process as “Methods” or the more grandiloquent “Methodology,” choose a good one, follow it, make it work for you.

Technorati Tags: Identity,
Digital Identity,
Identity Management,
Methodology

As we revel in all the new technologies around us, it is also good to contemplate the history upon which we stand. I received this photo in my Flickr feed today.

This historical marker in Wendover, on the Utah/Nevada line reads, “On June 17, 1914, the first transcontinental telephone line was completed at this point on the border of Nevada and Utah. Construction forces of the Bell Telephone Company of Nevada, and the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company met here, making the last splice in the wires which joined East and West in voice communications for the first time.”

Just think – Skype wasn’t even invented yet!

Tags: Telephone
Golden Splice

As always, lucid and insightful, Pat Patterson responds to James McGovern‘s long list of questions about Federated Identity.

Tags: Identity
Digital Identity
Identity Management
Federated Identity
Pat Patterson
James McGovern