Many questions were missing from the governance NOI. I answered the first three ones explicitly in my response.
Is there currently shared language amongst the identified NSTIC stakeholders?
Answered on Page 12
No. I participated in both the NSTIC governance and privacy workshops in June and did not find there was shared understanding or language amongst stakeholders gathered. I did experience shared language and understanding with the people who I knew from the user-centric identity community (and its neighbors) but there are many new stakeholder groups that I was unfamiliar with and I found in many conversations that people were talking past each other constantly. This experience of not having shared language was one of the reasons the breakout group conversations were not productive and many experienced frustration.
Is there currently shared understanding and alignment amongst the identified NSTIC stakeholders? Answered on Page 18
No. I often find myself squirming while listening to fellow NSTIC stakeholders articulate their ideas about what we are doing with NSTIC. I imagine with all the comments I have made from a user-advocacy perspective that others have squirmed when I have spoken. Because I feel myself squirming often and I see others squirming too, I know there is limited shared understanding amongst NSTIC stakeholders.
What processes and structures are needed to meet the goals of NSTIC?
Answered on Page 19
Governance structures, process and methodologies developed in the last 25 years that use whole-systems sensing, listening, insight and direction finding, will be needed to meet these requirements and make the NSTIC vision real. Some of them are outlined in the Insight to Governance section below.
How does the steering group incorporate a broad range of stakeholder perspectives? In particular, how does it incorporate the perspectives of regular people from very diverse backgrounds and life stages who are doing transactions in the Identity Ecosystem as it evolves?
How is legitimacy earned from the many organized stakeholder “groups”? but also from regular people? Answered on Page 44
Legitimacy of the NSTIC steering group will emerge when a broad range of stakeholders, even those with “opposing” views, are following recommendations and working together towards the development of a coherent Identity Ecosystem. How can this happen? What processes could significantly increase the likelihood of this emergent property of legitimacy emerges?
The answer lies in not having the members of the “steering group” itself (using a combination of their points of view) be the origin of the “steering”. It should be a group that serves as a steward of and coordinator of proven systemic dialogue processes that regularly engage a wide range of stakeholders. The steering group takes action and makes recommendations based on the clarity and wisdom surfaced via regular, systematized stakeholder engagement online and offline. This section outlines a proposal of how this could work.
How can the NSTIC NPO facilitate the emergence of consensus amongst stakeholders?
The initial consensus can be developed among diverse stakeholders using the systems mapping tools described in the previous section. Consensus will not be on “the solution to the problems”, but on the polarities inherent in the system and a shared map of the roles and value flows in the existing and in the proposed ecosystem. These will support effective dialogues that don’t just go in circles but actually get at how the system is not working from the perspectives of various stakeholders as it evolves and provide some tools to discern actions to improve the situations arising.
What processes and structures are not likely to achieve the goals of NSTIC?
Top down, hierarchical, mechanistically understood systems and processes. There can be no “captain” of the ship. The web and the identity system with in it are complex adaptive systems and processes and structures that are in alignment with that form of organization.
How can shared language and understanding be developed by such a wide range of stakeholders?
This process can be largely organic and “naturally organizing” as it was with the original Identity Gang (although certain people did play a catalytic role like myself, Doc Searls, Phil Windley, the guys at Digital Identity World and Kim Cameron).
It can also be speeded up with the strategic choice of tools that engage the community in exercises that build shared language and lead to understanding.
Is there really private sector motivation to implement privacy processing technologies like U-Prove and IDMix that provide verified anonymity?
Currently I don’t think so. Tools that are good for people when they don’t want to have activity linked together are not being supported in the market. This is because they use the same OpenID URL or e-mail address all over the web and the sites can then find other sites they have used. None of the large identity providers or web browsers have any tools that help people manage de-linking of activity. The current proposals for BrowserID would broadcast an e-mail address of the user to all sites they visit.
How nature “governs” thriving ecosystems of diverse organisms?
How are the services that we think of as “identity management” done in nature?
How are networks facilitated so that information flows in trusted ways?
These should be answered in collaboration with natural systems and biomimicry experts (see Appendix 4).
This post is from pages 73-76 of Kaliya’s NSTIC Governance NOI Response – please see this page for the overview and links to the rest of the posts. Here is a link to the PDF.
This is the section before: Summary of NSTIC NOI response
This is the section after: Structure of the Steering Group
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