Digital Identities, Infrastructures and Government-related Initiatives…

Two interesting articles have been recently published on topics related to digital identities, infrastructures and government-related initiatives:

1) An article by Maggie Biggs, titled “National Id? What about a Global ID?” reports about FIXs, the Federation for Identity and Cross-Credentialing Systems:

“FIXs, a little-known group of non-profits, government contractors, commercial entities, and government agencies -- has just unveiled a first-of-its-kind global infrastructure to support distributed, integrated identity management and cross-credentialing across organizations. The implementation combines several existing security technologies along with a set of trusted models, policies, and operating rules to insure the accurate identity of personnel accessing physical sites or logical systems. Already in a pilot mode at a handful of government agencies and defense contractors, the FiXs identity management initiative does not have a hard date for broad deployment, although the impediments do not appear to be technical. …”

2) An article by Michael Holden, titled “Britain begins ID card procurement process” reports about the launch, on Thursday, of the ID Card procurement process:

“LONDON (Reuters) - Britain launched on Thursday the selection process to choose companies to run its multi-billion pound national identity card scheme, the world's most ambitious biometric project. Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government described the move as "another milestone" towards the controversial compulsory scheme, which is expected to cost more than 5 billion pounds over the next decade.”