Liberty Alliance Changes Structure

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Liberty Alliance, the global identity consortium working to build a more trusted Internet for consumers, governments and businesses worldwide, today announced changes to its global membership structure and new benefits for members. The new initiatives are designed to make it easier for all individuals and organizations to access the resources of the Alliance and to participate in developing the next generation of secure, privacy-respecting and interoperable identity standards based on Liberty’s proven model of addressing the personal, business and technology aspects of digital identity management.

With today’s news, Liberty Alliance has opened many of its Special Interest Groups (SIGs), mail lists and meetings to the public. The consortium has also redefined membership levels and increased benefits across all member categories. The new membership structure has been launched to eliminate barriers to participation within the Alliance across organizations, geographies and vertical sectors in order to speed the development and deployment of open and interoperable digital identity management solutions. Highlights of the membership changes announced today include:

Individual Memberships – Individuals may now join Liberty Alliance to take part in cross-organizational initiatives or to participate in the Alliance on an activity-by-activity basis. Previously, membership in Liberty Alliance was open only to organizations. But as the global identity landscape continues to evolve, Liberty Alliance recognizes that all voices need to be heard when it comes to collaboratively addressing industry-wide and vertical-specific identity management requirements. Individuals can join Liberty Alliance as Associate or Sponsor members with information about how to join available at http://www.projectliberty.org/index.php/liberty/membership/become_a_member.

Open SIGs - Mirroring the open and collaborative community of openLiberty.org launched earlier this year, Liberty Alliance is opening membership in regional and global SIGs, such as the Identity Theft Prevention Group, the eHealth Group and the Japan Special Interest Group, to non-members. All new SIGs will be open to the public. This will allow developers, individuals and organizations to both monitor and fully participate in ongoing activities, discussions and events designed to address and solve industry and cross-industry digital identity management issues. A list of the Liberty Alliance Special Interest Groups open to the public, as well as information about how to join SIGs is available at http://wiki.projectliberty.org/index.php/Main_Page

Open Mail Lists - Liberty is the only global identity organization that develops standards based on well defined use-cases and with input from developers, vendors and users who have a stake in their success. This collaborative process ensures that the output of Liberty Alliance meets the real world identity management requirements of deployers and users worldwide. The open mail lists will allow individuals and organizations to monitor and understand the standards development process within Liberty’s Technology Expert Group (TEG) while providing insight into what’s coming next in identity standards from Liberty Alliance. Mail lists that are open to the public are available at: http://projectliberty.org/index.php/liberty/public_community

New Member Benefits – The Liberty Alliance membership structure is now based on three levels: the Management Board, Sponsors and Associates. Membership levels are defined based on the degree of participation individuals and organizations may want to undertake within Liberty. The new structure creates a closer relationship between all categories to allow greater participation at all membership levels. With the new structure, individuals and organizations joining Liberty Alliance as an Associate Member, can fully participate in one of Liberty’s four Expert Groups, which include the Business and Marketing Expert Group (BMEG), the Technology Expert Group (TEG), the Strong Authentication Expert Group (SAEG) and the Public Policy Expert Group (PPEG). A full list of member benefits released today is available at http://www.projectliberty.org/index.php/liberty/membership/membership_matrix.

“Liberty’s open and more inclusive membership structure provides new opportunities for individuals, governments and enterprise of all sizes and in every market sector to both leverage and participate in the work of the Alliance,” said Brett McDowell, executive director of Liberty Alliance. ”With today’s news we’ve set the stage for helping to ensure wide participation in the collaborative development of the next generation of open and interoperable digital identity management solutions.”

The Liberty Alliance Project