Kiwi chair for new eGovernment identity standards body

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 17 August 2006 19:22

IT Industry - Strategy

The Liberty Alliance has launched a new eGovernment Group billed as "the only global identity group addressing the technology, business and policy aspects of identity management in the government sector" and has named Colin Wallis of the New Zealand Government's State Services Commission as its chair.
The group also includes representation from government organisations from Denmark, Finland, France, Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, along with global and regional technology vendors and enterprises working in the government sector: ActivIdentity, The Boeing Company, Gemalto, NEC, Neustar, NTT and Sun Microsystems.

According to the Alliance, "This diverse mix of thought leaders deploying public sector identity management solutions will help ensure that the output of Liberty's eGovernment group meets the real-world identity needs of governments, enterprises and citizens around the globe."

The somewhat Orwellian-named Liberty Alliance was formed by an eclectic collection of major companies, from airlines to mobile phone manufacturers in 2001, primarily to streamline and harmonise the control of access to information systems. Its stated aim was to "create an open, standards-based solution for network identity and authentication to provide single sign-on to the Internet and to the mobile Internet".