EUSTIC

The formation of identity management federations has been slower than expected. Despite their potential business benefits, numerous issues have impeded their take up such as: validating the trustworthiness of the various providers, the use of appropriate business models, and legal redress and liabilities.

The objective of EUSTIC is to facilitate the creation of profitable Trust and Identity Federations as well as the joining together of existing federations on a pan-European and global basis. It will do this through the creation of a free to use Trust and Identity Federation Toolkit and Reference Library comprising: a methodology for the successful creation of profitable identity and trust federation management infrastructures, various business models, a business federation score card, a risk management methodology, a trust framework meta model with supporting tools, an open source reference implementation, model contracts and legal agreements, and support for the (partial) automatic negotiation of agreements and the construction of federations. All of this will be made readily available via the EU Joinup web site.

In order to validate the utility of the Federation Toolkit and Reference Library EUSTIC will spawn the creation of new identity management federations, as well as interconnecting existing federations from different EC countries in a new pan-European federation. This will be achieved through the EUSTIC Partner Alliance that is supporting the business development of federations through a representative coverage of use cases in multiple sectors (finance, transport, utility, housing, health, trade and services) across Europe. By the end of 2011 the Alliance already has the support of more than 60 organizations, including 15 large enterprises.