Information card
Visually, each i-card has a card-shaped picture and a card name associated with it that enable people to organize their digital identities and to easily select one they want to use for any given interaction.
The first kind of personal Information cards were also introduced as part of Microsoft’s Windows CardSpace software in November 2006.
Summary of characteristics: The first kind of managed card was introduced as part of Microsoft’s Windows CardSpace software in November 2006.
The behavior, file format and interoperability characteristics of these kinds of managed cards are defined by Microsoft documents such as the Identity Selector Interoperability Profile v 1.5[3] (or OASIS IMI v1.0 Committee Draft;[4] see self-issued.info[5] for a more complete list), in combination with open standards including WS-Trust[6] and others.
Managed i-cards can be auditing, non-auditing, or auditing-optional: Relationship cards are under development by the Higgins project (see the report by Paul Trevithick).
[10] Once resolved, consumers of this service can inspect, and potentially modify the attributes of the entity as well as get its schema as described in Web Ontology Language (OWL).
The protocols needed to build Identity Metasystem components can be used by anyone for any purpose with no licensing cost and interoperable implementations can be built using only publicly available documentation.
Patent promises have been issued by Microsoft,[11] IBM,[12] and others ensuring that the protocols underlying the Identity Metasystem can be freely used by all.
Interoperable i-card components have been built by dozens of companies and projects for platforms including Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, plus a prototype implementation for phones.
Several interoperability testing events for i-cards have been sponsored by OSIS[13] and the Burton Group,[14] one was at the Interop at the October 2007 European Catalyst Conference in Barcelona[15] and the most recent was at RSA 2008.
These events are helping to ensure that the different Information Card software components being built by the numerous participants in the Identity Metasystem work well together.
In June 2008, industry leaders including Equifax, Google, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, PayPal and others created the Information Card Foundation in order to advance the use of the Information Card metaphor as a key component of an open, interoperable, royalty-free, user-centric identity layer spanning both the enterprise and the Internet.
