Colin Wallis, from the State Services Commission, is to chair a new e-government group called the Liberty Alliance eGovernment Group.
The group was formed by the Liberty Alliance, which describes itself as a “global identity consortium working to build a more trusted internet”.
The new organisation will be open to “all organisations interested in identifying and addressing common business, technical and policy challenges that face the public sector, [in the area of secure establishment and maintenance of user identity].”
The Liberty Alliance was founded in 2001 and its stated aim is “to establish an open standard for federated network identity”.
Liberty’s eGovernment group will include representatives of government organisations from Denmark, Finland, France, Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as global and regional technology vendors, and enterprises working in the government sector.
Laurence Millar, head of the SSC’s ICT branch, says he sees the establishment of the new organisation as recognition of the work done within the branch on a flexible authentication scheme that takes respect for user privacy into account.