This is just a pointer to the regular post on my blog:

http://blog.echovar.com/?p=483

A discussion of stronger authentication, identity and choice architecture.

/cliff

Introduction to Identity Commons

We are a community of groups working on addressing the social, legal and technical issues that arise with the emerging, identity, data and social layer of the internet.

To understand more about the community the wiki where you will find it..

Highlights from Q1 2008 Reports

The 6th Internet Identity Workshop is coming up May 12-14, immediately followed by a Data Sharing Summit.

The OpenID Foundation had 5 corporate members join the board - Google, Verisign, Microsoft, Yahoo and IBM. OpenID Japan was founded and guidelines for local chapters are being developed.

OSIS Open Source Identity Systems is working towards the completion of its third major Interop event (at RSA and the European Identity Conference) with 57 projects participating.

XRI 2.0 will be going to a vote within OASIS shortly.

Higgins 1.0 open source code base for identity systems was released on Feb 21st.

Project VRM is leading a 1.5 day workshop at the European Identity Conference and has an active London Chapter. Work continues on the initial text case Personal Address Management

New Groups of Note:

Enterprise Positioning is a community of people inside enterprises who need to understand and explain the application of user-centric identity in that context.

IC Evangelism and Marketing began to help develop clearer messaging for Identity Commons and develop a values statement.

Newbies 4 Newbies have given invaluable feedback on the language used to articulate user-centric identity, helping to improve the Internet Identity Workshop announcement significantly. If you are new to User-Centric Digtial Identity – wondering what they heck is all this stuff – what do these acronyms mean – this is the group for you.

The Photo Group started with three groups on Flickr 1) Identerati Portraits, 2) The Art of Identity and 3) Member Gallery with the photos they have taken.

The Quiet Groups:
IC Collaborative Tools , XDI Commons , Identity Schema , Identity Rights Agreements , Identity Futures , IdMedia Review

PDF of Report

INTERNET IDENTITY WORKSHOP Report Q1 2008 (Home Page) (Charter

Phil Windley, Kaliya Hamlin and Doc Searls produce the Internet Identity Workshop twice a year. One way to track the vector of developments in user-centric identity is to record the milestones of the workshop each year. This is Phil Windley's characterization of the developments (based on some earlier comments from Johannes Ernst):

#1 Oct 2005: initial meeting and introductions to projects being worked on.

#2 May 2006: proponents of multiple identity protocols start dialog about how they can work together.

#3 Dec 2006: small-scale interoperability and some consolidation.

#4 May 2007: interoperability demonstrations of Information Cards and lightweight solutions converge on OpenID.

At the 5th IIW in Dec 2007 OpenID, CardSpace, and SAML, along with supporting technologies, projects, and consortia were accepted. The questions have become what to do now that these foundational technologies have been worked out.

The 6th Internet Identity Workshop is May 12-14 in Mountain View.
Based on feedback from Newbies 4 Newbies the language describing usercentric identity and the topics covered in the even have been improved. Their feedback is also helping shape the content of our introductory day. http://iiw.idcommons.net/index.php/Iiw2008a

We have booked the 7th Internet Identity Workshop for November 10-12, 2008 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

Thank You to our sponsors to date:
AOL, Novell, Microsoft, British Telecom, Liberty Alliance Project, Google, Verisign, Plaxo, Adobe, Cisco, OASIS IDtrust, CommerceNet, SXIP, Higgins Project,
Bandit Project, Vidoop, Applied Identity, Authentrus, Planetwork, ClaimID

Breakdowns
It has been a challenge to get community input for the upcoming workshop - people are very busy with work.

Requests
If you have a project, please update your one pager:
http://iiw.idcommons.net/index.php/Iiw2008a#Who_Participates_in_IIW.3F

We are open to feedback and suggestions for the conference, please contribute those ASAP.

We would like your help inviting others to participate. Please don't be shy to invite others.

Announcements
We will be announcing our Monday May 12th program shortly. It will include a comprehensive introduction beginning at 1pm. With all the developments in the field it will be of interest to all. The main program will begin at 3:30.

We are looking for sponsors - if you are interested in sponsoring please contact Phil. Phil@windley.org

The Data Sharing Summit will follow the Internet Identity Workshop on May 15th. It will include a wider range of participants who are interested in this specific set of technical and social issues.

Open ID Foundation Report Q1 2008 (Home Page) (Charter
Successes
Feb 07, 2008 09:00 ET Technology Leaders Join OpenID Foundation to Promote Open Identity Management on the Web

OpenID Foundation to Support Internet User Single Sign-On Technology

CORVALLIS, OR--(Marketwire - February 7, 2008) - The OpenID Foundation today announced that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) have joined as its first corporate board members.

With these companies' deep expertise in Internet and security technology, the OpenID Foundation strengthens the industry-wide effort to empower users with portable Web identities, or OpenIDs. This effort helps ensure the evolution of an open and interoperable Internet that helps people take control of how their personal information is shared on-line and aids on-line businesses to attract and retain more users by simplifying and securing the management of digital identities.

OSIS (Open Source Identity Systems) Report Q1 2008 (Home Page) (Charter

Successes
The OSIS wiki pages were moved to Identity Commons. http://osis.idcommons.net/wiki/Main_Page
Weekly interoperability meetings were held to prepare for the I3 Event.
A google-group (http://tinyurl.com/2n84tt) for user-centric identity interop was created.

Following on the planning for I3 begun in 2007 Q4:
RSA Conference planners were solicited and they agreed to an interoperability event at RSA Conference, April 7 - 11 Moscone Convention Center, San Francisco, California.
A detailed plan was drafted and reviewed for specific feature, function, and condition handling for information cards involving Identity Providers, Selectors, and Relying Parties; as well as for OpenID between Identity Providers and Relying Parties.
An automated database system was developed to make a generation of test matrices automatic between all participant solutions. Specific tests for each solution type were listed.
Work was begun to create automated test suites to enable testing against interoperability features. This work needs to be completed in Q2.
It was highly encouraged to keep the endpoints up continuously so that interoperability tests could occur at any time.
The 57 projects and companies participating in I3 (33 companies, 24 projects) consisted of:
o 7 information card identity selectors.
o 3 information card browser add-ons.
o 10 information cardidentity providers.
o 34 information card relying parties.
o 10 OpenID providers.
o 13 OpenID relying parties.

(Note that some projects/companies provided more than 1 solution.)

The actual interop at RSA was held April 8 and April 9 from 11AM - 6PM
OSIS provided the venue for an OSIS Steering Committee meeting held Monday April 7, and an OpenID BoF meeting held Wednesday April 9.

This event was done without the infrastructure support provided for the first two interops by The Burton Group.
The final phase of I3 will be held later in April at the 2nd European Identity Conference in Munich April 22 – 25.

Breakdowns
Of the breakdowns that were reported in Q4 2007:
Improved the reliability of the wiki by moving it to a new location.
Created better collaboration tools (the automated test matrices created by P. Dingle and funded by Microsoft).
A better mailing list through googlegroups was created (set by C. Andres).
There is now a consistent dial-in number for Conference Calls (courtesy of Novell).

In this quarter, significant investments by Novell, Microsoft, Parity Communications, and the newly formed Information Card Foundation made it possible to conduct a successful interop, and build key base components for interop evolution.

As anticipated, we have witnessed how much more we can get done when there is a core group with sufficient resources. Without that, breakdowns are inevitable.

Requests
Consistent Interoperability Messaging, Cooperative Interoperability Events

There were 3 interop events held at RSA Conference. In addition to OSIS,
Liberty/Concordia held an interoperability event covering 2 SAML use cases.
OASIS held an XACML interop event showing a single application running across approx. 12 different platforms.

At the OSIS Steering Committee meeting, invited guests, Roger Sullivan, President of the Liberty Alliance and Bill Washburn, Executive Director of the Open ID Foundation, voiced strong endorsement for ensuring that the public perception for these interops will be accurately seen as complementary (not competing) efforts. Charles Andres, Executive Director of the newly formed (but unannounced) Information Card Foundation, declared that the ICF would work closely with OIDF and Liberty/Concordia on any public positioning announcements made by any of these organizations to ensure consistent messaging.

There was general consensus that customers need to believe that these efforts are complementary across all platforms, or buying decisions will be delayed.

For example, with the 3 interop events, no overlap occurred -- Liberty/Concordia was a deep dive into 2 specific use cases. OASIS XACML showed a deeper dive into a specific application across 12 platforms. OSIS showed depth and breadth with over 160 tests interacting between 57 platforms. Each of these efforts were complementary and essential to advance the state of the industry as fast as possible.

Announcements
The last portion of I3 will be an interoperability event held at the 2nd European Identity Conference. https://www.id-conf.com/

HIGGINS Report Q1 2008 (Home page) (Charter)

Successes
Higgins released its 1.0 on February 21st, and the Eclipse Foundation issued a press release that included quotes from a number of the participating organizations. [1] Many, many thanks to all who contributed and made this possible.

Higgins also had a strong presence at EclipseCON 2008 in March. There was a Higgins tutorial, a short business talk on how Higgins works with other organizations and a short technology talk on security that was done jointly by the Equinox and Higgins projects.

Microsoft's Sam Ramji spoke about how Microsoft and Eclipse are collaborating in his keynote. This generated a lot of press and blog coverage. See Sam's Blog at [2]

Breakdowns
A release 1.0 is a major milestone. It is also just the beginning. There is more work to be done and more ideas to be implemented to support the vision of user-centric identity. In particular we are still working to make our downloads easier to navigate, and to improve our website, and to add more context providers, and to provide deeper support for more identity protocols, etc.

Requests
Higgins is always looking for more volunteers and additional corporate participation. We are not done yet!

Announcements
See Higgins at the OSIS interop April 8 and April 9 from 4:00 to 6:00 PM at the RSA Conference, Moscone Center South, San Francisco, Mezzanine Level, Purple Room 220

IC EVANGELISM AND MARKETING Report Q1 2008 (home page) (charter)
Successes
After discussing the need during the January Stewards Council Conference Call, a new core working group (parallel to IC Collaborative Tools) to help in the evangelism and marketing of Identity Commons as a whole was formed. A charter was proposed, with the purpose to "Provide content that will help Identity Commons, its member groups, and individuals more effectively communicate the goals, principles, and messages of Identity Commons. Assist in any evangelism efforts to bring appropriate working groups and individuals to become Identity Commons members."

The primary point of collaboration for this group will be the IC Evangelism & Marketing wiki page. We have taken as our first task to better address a values statement for Identity Commons, as this will be a starting point for future efforts.

Breakdowns
There are only two active members, are we looking for others who would like to contribute energy to this effort particularly those who have marketing expertise.

Christopher put a request out to the list asking for stories of "why" people originally joined Identity Commons, which we've gotten very few responses.

Requests
We have a number of very rough drafts for the values statement, which we need to collapse into one final version. If you are a good wordsmith, we could use your help. We also want to make sure that it accurately reflects the values of the broad Identity Commons community, so if something doesn't ring true to you, let us know.

Announcements
As of the April Stewards Council Conference Call, we have asked to become an official Identity Commons Working Group, with Christopher Allen as the initial representative to the Stewards Council.

IC COLLABORATION TOOLS Report Q1 2008 (home page) (charter)

Successes
Virtual host home.idcommons.net has been created.
Most current system software has been installed.

Breakdowns
The transfer from the old host has not yet been accomplished.

Requests
Time, money.

Announcements
We could use volunteers to help us maintain and set up the collaborative tools many of our working groups are using. Eekim@blueoxen.com

NEWBIES 4 NEWBIES Report Q1 2008 (home page) (charter)

Successes
We've developed some initial copy for the Starting Points page, which we've intended to be a resource of information for those new to the community. It now includes primer-type information such as: 1) What is User-Centric Identity, 2) Why should I care? and 3) What is Identity Commons. We are also in the process of developing a section entitled, "Figuring out the Landscape." This section will include information about Community participants, including technologies, projects, and companies. We're hoping to solicit feedback from other community members soon.

We worked on refining the language for the IIW2008a Announcement. We tried to make the announcement more approachable for those new to the community, and Kaliya did a great job incorporating our feedback.

We're in the process of helping outline the introductory session of the next workshop. We'd like to make it easy for Newbies to engage, and reflective of the work that happens at the workshop.

Breakdowns
Unfortunately, our former Steward, Dan Nelson, had to leave the group due to personal commitments. We've been working hard to maintain the momentum we had after the December workshop, but we only have four active members. While we've accomplished a lot, we are still looking for additional participants.

Requests
If you come across anyone who is new to this space, please point them in our direction. We are very interested in growing our ranks and would like to connect with other Newbies before the next workshop. Furthermore, our membership was intended to completely turn over at after every workshop (afterall, we wouldn't be Newbies anymore), but in order to do that effectively, we need some enthusiasm and word of mouth working for us. Please let all potential Newbies know about our group and encourage their participation.

ENTERPRISE POSITIONING Report Q1 2008 (home page) (charter)

Successes
The Enterprise Positioning of User centric Identity team was formed shortly after the last IIW meeting. A Charter has been drafted and submitted to the Stewards Council and is pending approval. An initial conceptual draft of value drivers for the enterprise has been created, and is currently being assessed and refined. Two Peer-to-Peer sessions were held at RSA on user-centric Identity. Ed Amemiya collected names of people interested in joining the group.

Breakdowns
Bandwidth to assess value propositions, and define tangible economic values, is limited, and has been a gating factor for the team. The team is working to establish additional focused resources, and solicit additional membership.

Requests
The Enterprise Positioning team is looking for interested individuals to participate on this team. If you have an understanding of identity in today's enterprise and are interested in promoting user-centric solutions, we can use your help.

You can find out more about our working group by reading the charter @ http://wiki.idcommons.net/index.php/Enterprise_Positioning_Charter

You can join the working group by subscribing to the mailing list: http://idcommons.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/idpositioning

Announcements
No new announcement at this time.

XRI.org Report Q1 2008 (home page) (charter)
Successes
XRI Resolution 2.0 Committee Draft 02 Revision 04 was approved to be an OASIS Committee Draft. Also, it went through the public review and is now under Committee Specification Vote.

Breakdowns
None for the quarter.

Requests
XRI 2.0 will go to the OASIS voting pretty soon. IdCommons members who are also a voting member of OASIS Open, please cast your vote when the ballot opens.

Announcements
As a key step forward in XRI and XDI infrastructure, the XDI.org Global Registry Services (GRS) will be being upgraded to support XRI Resolution 2.0. It will support all key new XRI Resolution 2.0 features including automatic CanonicalID verification and XRDS extension elements by the end of Q2. The XDI.org public XRI proxy resolver at xri.net will also be upgraded to support these features.

XDI Commons Report Q1 2008 (charter)
Successes
The OASIS XDI Technical Committee, which defines the open standards for XDI, completed an update of its charter and deliverables.
Markus Sabadello released the first version of XDI4J (XDI for Java).
The OASIS XRI Technical Committee (XDI is based on XRI) complete the final review of XRI Resolution 2.0 Committee Draft 03 so that it can be submitted for an OASIS Standard vote in May.

Breakdowns
None this quarter.

Requests
The XDI TC invites Identity Commons community members who are interested in an open data portability format that supports user-centric control of data sharing (via XDI link contracts) to join the XDI Commons working group or the OASIS XDI Technical Committee or both.

Announcements
The first release of XDI4J (XDI for Java) was made by Markus Sabadello via the Higgins Project at Eclipse.
As a key step forward in XRI and XDI infrastructure, the XDI.org Global Registry Services (GRS) will be upgraded to support XRI Resolution 2.0. It will support all key new XRI Resolution 2.0 features including automatic CanonicalID verification and XRDS extension elements by the end of Q2. The XDI.org public XRI proxy resolver at xri.net will also be upgraded to support these features.

Project VRM has been busy, busy, busy since the last report. This is the Report for Q1 2008 (charter) (home page)

The London Chapter, incorporating most of our European effort, has been holding monthly meetings (see http://vrmhub.pbwiki.com/). These meetings span the internal (as code is written and projects moved forward) and external, introducing and clarifying VRM to interested parties, businesses, entities and individuals. The London group has been a bundle of energy and remains focused on the tasks at hand: to expand and educate and develop VRM.

Stateside the subcommittees formed in the VRM Moutain View meeting have been hard at work, as well.

The Vision Committee ("Define/Advocate Clear Vision for VRM Worldwide") has been gathering data and putting together statements and some papers. In addition, a special Wiki Page for development and definition has been a result. This is still in somewhat of an alpha state, but we expect to announce this to the public at large in the next quarter.

The Standards Committee has been hard at work on establishing the framework and definitions that will allow interoperability. As many in the Identity world know, establishing standards and the work involved in definition and specifics is no mean feat. Significant progress has been made in this area.

The Project VRM initial test case, Change of Address, has been given the name Personal Address Management (PAM). Change of address is universal, occurs throughout and across all demographic, economic and geographic boundaries, and occurs with a frequency that few other events attain. Further, change of address has impact on commercial and non commercial interests, which sheds light and value on the "non-CRM" aspect of VRM.

In more news from Europe, we were notified last week that Project VRM has been nominated for the Top 3 Projects in the category "Special Award" for the European Identity Awards. This will occur at the 2nd European Identity Conference later this month. Just prior to that will be the first European VRM Conference, held in Munich April 21 and 22. Doc Searls will attend, and will be speaking at the European ID conference, as well.

Members of the Project VRM Steering Committee will be attending the IIW in May, and there will be some presentations and brainstorming sessions around PAm and other matters.

We are working on a VRM conference for July or August (date to be determined shortly), to be hosted by The Berkman Center, held at or nearby the Harvard campus.

THE IDENTITY GANG Report Q1 2008 (Home Page) (Charter)
The Identity Gang was founded in 2004 as a mailing list and small gatherings that happened at events like PCForum, Burton Group Catalyst and Digital Identity World. It developed lexicon of identity terms to facilitate dialogue between the diverse communities -- grass roots small companies thinking about light-weight identity systems, large enterprises, vendors, and networks, along with existing standards in the area.

Currently there are 470 people on the mailing list and it hums along.

IDENTITY RIGHTS AGREEMENTS Report Q1 2008 (Home Page) (Charter)
Successes
good discussion thread Where to find Identity Commons Standard Contract?

Breakdowns
not much time

ID SCHEMAS Report Q1 2008(Home Page) (Charter)
Successes
There was no activity in this working group, however activity may resume in Q2.

Breakdowns
If we don't get this group restarted in Q2 we should disband.

Requests
Kaliya mentioned that she had been talking with Bob about a "Legal IIW" and sees this group as the natural host/home for the event. Can you put her in touch with Bob or have him post something to our mailing list?

ID FUTURES Repot (Home Page) (Charter)
This group was formed to do interactive shallow and indepth consideration of potential future events and scenarios for an identity layer of the web. Our first activity prior to DIDW in September 2007 generated 50+ potential events (see them on the wiki). Some activity might be planned for the forthcoming IIW. If you would like to participate kaliya@mac.com

ID MEDIA REVIEW Report Q1 2008 (Home Page) (Charter)
Successes
No successes because no attempts this quarter :-(

Breakdowns
Bob is either worthless or lazy and has done nothing effective. He did however get the Photo Group off the ground in Q1, and hopes to do the same to this group in Q2.

Requests
Bob requests your patience and forbearance while he gets his stuff in order with respect to organizing this group.

Announcements
No announcements. Watch this space for excitement to come. Please contact Bob Blakley if you would to help with this groups next activities Blakley@burtongroup.com.

Successes
Charter has been completed. Bob Blakely is the steward and set up the three flickr groups.

The Photo Group Member Gallery: http://www.flickr.com/groups/664668@N21/

The Art of Identity: http://www.flickr.com/groups/629900@N24/

Identerati Portraits: http://www.flickr.com/groups/664664@N21/

Anyone can view the galleries; only members can post photos to them. To join the Photo Group, just login to Flickr, go to the page of the group in Flickr and request to join.

Breakdowns
It's clear we need moderation guidelines for the pictures contributed to flickr groups. We'll have to discuss what the rules should be.

Requests
Request membership to consider what rules we need for "The Art of Identity" contributions.

Announcements
No Announcements this quarter.

Text and PDF downloadable copies of this report are attached at the bottom of this page.

Introduction:
Identity Commons (IC)is a loosely connected community of Working Groups that are addressing the social, legal and technical issues that arise with the emerging identity layer of the internet. The purpose of Identity Commons is to support, facilitate, and promote the creation of an open identity layer for the Internet -- one that maximizes control, convenience, and privacy for the individual while encouraging the development of healthy, interoperable communities.

A wide range of individuals from both large and small companies have been dialoguing and developing tools to make this vision a reality. This past year the community was formalized, forming a nonprofit corporation. Identity Commons has adopted a set of principals to ensure an open, inclusive, and bottoms-up operating structure. Each Working Group has a representative on the Stewards Council. Membership resides in the Working Groups - where the real work is happening. Each quarter Working Groups report on their activities. This was our first quarter of official operation with reporting Q4 2007. There is also news from groups in the process of joining Identity Commons included.

Contents:

Current Working Groups

Community & Events
Identity Gang
Internet Identity Workshop

Technology
OSIS (Open Source Identity System)
OpenID
Identity Schemas

Social Agreements and Policy
Identity Rights Agreements
XRI Org

ID Commons Operations

IC Collaborative Tools

In Process to Join Identity Commons:

Business Application

VRV (Vendor Relationship Management)

Open Source Code Projects for Identity Systems and Data Sharing

• Higgins Project
• Bandit Project
• Pamela Project

Groups related to Standards

• SAML Commons
• XDI Commons

Newly Formed

• Enterprise Positioning
• Enterprise Identity Architects
• Newbies 4 Newbies
• Inclusive Initiatives
• Id Futures
• Id Media Review

You can find more background information about IC here and a more in depth history here

IIW Home
IIW Charter at IC
This report on the wiki

Successes
Phil Windley, Kaliya Hamlin and Doc Searls produce the Internet Identity Workshop twice a year. One way to track the vector of developments in user-centric identity is to record the milestones of the workshop each year. This is Phil Windley's characterization of the developments (based on some earlier comments from Johannes Ernst):

#1 Oct 2005: initial meeting and introductions to projects being worked on.

#2 May 2006: proponents of multiple identity protocols start dialog about how they can work together

#3 Dec 2006: small-scale interoperability and some consolidation

#4 May 2007: interoperability demonstrations of Information Cards and lightweight solutions converge on OpenID.

At the 5th IIW in Dec 2007 OpenID, CardSpace, and SAML, along with supporting technologies, projects, and consortia are accepted. The questions have become what to do now that these foundational technologies have been worked out.

This was December 3-5 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

This event was a real mile stone for the community - some described it as reaching the "end of the beginning" for the community. OpenID 2.0 had its IPR issues settled and the spec declared final. The first real in-depth meeting of the minds of that group had happened at the first IIW in Oct 2005 in Berkeley. Other developments included continuing discussions between OAuth and OpenID about how their two open standards complemented one another and the Higgins project moved closer to a 1.0 release.

At the beginning of the 2007 workshop we engaged in a community conversation about "what we know and what we don't know" out of that came different statements that were available for 'voting' using Dotmocracy. The conference was so good that almost no one had time to read through the ideas posted, but they are captured on a wiki.

At the close of this IIW we had community awards handed out - a range of people were recognized for their efforts in the community both at the event and over the past year. To see who awarded who for what check out this page.

We also gave the first Owen Davis Award to Andrew Nelson and Owen Davis for exemplary dedication to the “good of the community”. They were the founders of the first Identity Commons in 2001.

Notes Pages: Tuesday Wednesday

Blog coverage was not as much for this event as there has been in the past. It is never too late to post reflections - here are some.

There was a video recap produced by Been Verified

Thank You to our sponsors to date:
AOL, Novell, Microsoft, British Telecom, Liberty Alliance Project, Google, Verisign, Plaxo, Adobe, Cisco, OASIS IDtrust, CommerceNet, SXIP, Higgins Project, Bandit Project, Vidoop, Applied Identity, Authentrus, Planetwork, ClaimID

Breakdowns
The Monday evening dinner venue was too small and the music was too loud at the Tuesday evening venue. These problems will be remedied for future workshops.

Requests

• Please add more notes/reflections on the wiki if you have some about a session you were at. Please blog about IIW 2007b and add to the blog coverage.
• We need to know dates to avoid when booking our Fall workshop. PLEASE let us know ASAP if there are events planned we should not conflict with.
• We would like your help inviting others to participate. Please don't be shy to invite those who may have an interest in Identity Commons.

Announcements

.

Identity Gang Home
Identity Gang Charter at IC
Identity Gang Charter at IC

The Identity Gang was founded in 2004 as a mailing list and small gatherings that happened at events like PCForum, Burton Group Catalyst and Digital Identity World. It developed lexicon of identity terms to facilitate dialogue between the diverse communities working on similar issues. These groups included "grass roots" small companies thinking about light weight identity systems, large enterprises, vendors, and networks, along with existing standards in the area.

Currently there are 470 people (out of date list of people and organizations) on the mailing list with approximately 3 messages per day. There are currently no active projects underway and most of the old wiki content is on this new wiki.