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January 29, 2003
On the Topic of Identity...
As long as we're on the topic of identity, I just read Andre Durand's paper on The Phases of Identity Infrastructure Adoption at Digital ID World. Andre's done a great job of laying out the problem and arguing for an adoption path that leads to acceptance of an individual's control of their own digital identity (an odd sounding phrase if you haven't read the paper).
09:47 PM | Recommend This | Print This
NECCC Paper on Identity
NECCC is the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council. You may think, given the name, that its about business, but its really about eGovernment. It just sprung up before the term eGovernment was in vogue and back then, eGovernment was called eCommerce by folks. They have a comprehensive paper on the identity problem which lists current Federal laws as well as those of California (which is seen as a bell weather state). It also talks about options, and how governments could respond. They're more ecumenical than I was in my article in Digital ID World. As an aside, the paper says that its target audience is elected officials like Governors. If so, its 67 pages too long.
09:27 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Global XML Web Services Architecture
Yesterday I wrote about the web services framework that Microsoft and IBM have pushed forward. That framework has taken for in the Global XML Web Services Architecture, or GXA. The architecture is apparently the product of a consortium headed by IBM and Microsoft with help from Verisign, BEA Systems, RSA Security and SAP. I frankly don't know how much of a consortium it is and how much is being driven by Microsoft, but I'm hopeful that the results won't be .NET specific. As I wrote yesterday, the goal of GXA is to fill the gaps that SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI leave in solving real business problems. GXA is being developed with the following general principals:
- Decentralization and Federation - GXA specifications are designed with "constrained agreement" in mind.
- Modularity - GXA is built using modular components rather than large, monolithic specifications that offer end-to-end functionality.
- XML-Based Data Model - GXA is SOAP-based.
- Transport Neutrality - GXA is specified entirely at the SOAP level and thus is not HTTP or message specific.
- Application Domain Neutrality - GXA specifications are general-purpose solutions to broad problems that span application domains.
These principals are important if GXA is to sit between vertical market-specific specifications and protocols and the base SOAP protocol that provides the foundation for web services. A number of draft specifications were released for comment in December 2002. A few comments:
- Not surprisingly, the security piece has had the most work done. Without security, there's not much hope that web services will be used for business transactions and security is a place where web services have taken a lot of lumps in the past year.
- Also not surprising is the fact that the list of policies isn't a one-to-one match up with the framework that was proposed over a year ago. I'd expect to see all of the categories covered eventually, but they'll morph and split in funny ways as people really start to solve the problems.
I plan to investigate and write about each of these policies over the coming days.
05:56 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Conspiracy Theories Aplenty
I was contacted by three different people today about the fact that my name is still in the Utah Master Directory, even though I've left the State. Why its still in there, I don't know. I did request that it be left in a for a few days after the first of the year because I hadn't had a chance to send a thank-you email to the Cabinet and hadn't yet downloaded some of my old email due to my father-in-law's funeral over the holidays. This, of course, didn't stop the conspiracy theorists in the State (and there are plenty---that's what people with lots of free time do to keep from being bored) from concluding that I was the invisible hand and still involved somehow.
Well, rest assured, I'm neither involved, nor do I want to be. Even if I was involved, why would I need a State email address? Don't you think a conspiracy would be smart enough to not use the State email system? I stopped trusting it way back last September as "insecure" for anything I wanted to keep out of the prying eyes of the conspiracy buffs. Frankly, I'm happy to be a private citizen again, because I'm free to say things I couldn't have said as CIO. And there's plenty I want to say.
02:08 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Government Computer News
My comments on web services are covered in a short article in the January 27, 2003 issue of Government Computer News under the title "Former Utah CIO Offers Pointers." I really like that they point to my blog. :-)
01:51 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Hey Apple! A Feature I Want in iChat
I was just sitting here working and noticed on my AIM buddy list that someone had gone red. That is, they marked themselves as "being away" even though they're still logged in. This of course is perfect. One of the things i like most about IM is presence; that is, knowing when someone is around in my virtual world. The problem is that people don't usually do this. They let the machine mark them as idle (not bad) or log out (which means they could be there and just not logged in). What I want is for my computer to know when I'm there and when I've stepped away...even if I'm not using it. The great part is that I have all the pieces that would form a solution right now.
I use bluetooth on my powerbook and have a Sony T68i bluetooth equipped phone. I want iChat to mark me available (unless I override) whenever my powerbook can see my phone and mark me away when it can't. My phone becomes my "presence" token. I don't know if iChat has the right hooks to be able to script something like this or not, but it would be a neat feature.