Updated. The array of initiatives and working groups and acronyms in identity is large, seemingly growing all the time and very definitely a bewildering jungle to the newcomer.

This problem just came up again today in the Identity Open Space (see, one of those bewildering places!) after Digital Identity World (another), and I figured somebody had to post a simple map to the place, and that might as well be me. So here you are. Let me know what I forgot; and, if you are part of one of the initiatives that I mention, please correct me if my description should be improved.

This is alphabetical to be as fair as possible. It has been pointed out to me that the relationships between the projects are also very important; I agree, but that’s going to be real hard to document. So for the time being, that’s all you get

Bandit

Open-source project that builds a set of loosely-coupled components for Authentication, Authorization, and Auditing. Initiated by Novell.

Concordia

Recently initiated in the context of the Liberty Alliance (see below), Concordia will initially focus on use cases for multi-protocol interoperability. Concordia is legally part of the Liberty Alliance, I believe, but there are some talks (though no actions yet) to charter it under the Identity Commons.

Digital Identity World

The main identity trade show and conference in the United States.

Higgins

An open-source project currently part of the Eclipse Foundation that develops multi-protocol software components. For example, the Higgins project is developing open-source information card selectors similar to Microsoft CardSpace for other platforms.

Identity Commons

The Identity Commons is an industry association for the collaborative development of the technical, social and legal aspects of a user-centric identity layer on the internet. Many of the other initiatives listed here are chartered as working groups in the Identity Commons. Some of them are formed to accomplish a specific objective and disband shortly thereafter. Others are expected to keep going for a long time. If you are new to this bewildering array of projects, this is probably where you should start exploring (link)

Identity Gang

The Identity Gang is an invitation-based mailing list and public wiki bringing together most of the movers and shakers around identity. Operating as Working Group of the Identity Commons.

Identity Open Space

A series of "unconference"-style events produced by Kaliya Hamlin, Doc Searls and Phil Windley, in association with other events such as Digital Identity World. See also Internet Identity Workshop.

IETF

A technical standards body for internet protocol standards. No identity-related work is currently performed there, but there are several related activities.

Internet Identity Workshop

A series of "unconference"-style workshops produced twice a year by Kaliya Hamlin, Doc Searls and Phil Windley. It is the primary face-to-face gathering of the various individuals and groups working on user-centric identity. It operates as Working Group of the Identity Commons.

ITU-T Focus Group on Identity Management

The ITU is a technical standards body for telecommunications-related protocol standards following international standardization processes. The objective of the Focus Group is to facilitate the development of a generic Identity Management framework, by fostering participation of all telecommunications and ICT experts on Identity Management.

Kerberos Consortium

Just recently created, the MIT Kerberos Consortium intends "to establish Kerberos as the universal authentication platform for the world’s computer networks.".

Liberty Alliance

An industry association for the development and promotion of federated identity standards. Established in 2001, it has focused mostly on intra and inter-enterprise scenarios.

OAuth

A community and protocol to allow secure API authentication from desktop and web applications.

Oath

Organization and technology standards to define open authentication protocols. for universal strong authentication on many kinds of devices and networks.

OASIS

A technical standards body for structured information standards. The development of XRI, XDI and SAML identity protocols resides here.

OpenID

OpenID is a community and a set of user-centric identity protocols, facilitated by the OpenID Foundation. OpenID is also chartered as a working group in the Identity Commons.

OSIS

Organizes and harmonizes the development of software components for the internet-scale identity system by focusing on specific interoperability use cases, and demonstrating these multi-vendor scenarios at public events. Organized as a working group of the Identity Commons.

PRIME

European research project to develop a working prototype of a privacy-enhancing identity management system.

Shibboleth

Part of the Internet 2 project, Shibboleth is an open-source project that provides Web-based Single-Sign-On.

VRM

Initiated by Doc Searls at the Berkman Center at the Harvard Law School, the Vendor Relationship Management project is a community-driven effort to support the creation and building of VRM tools. The VRM project is expected to be chartered under the Identity Commons.

W3C

A technical standards body for web standards. No identity-related work is currently performed there, but there are several related activities.

XDI.org

A non-profit governing the XDI and XRI infrastructure. It also holds the XRI and XDI intellectual property.

Yadis

Meta-data discovery framework for identity services. Now required for OpenID implementations, but useful for many other applications as well that need to discovery services from URLs or other identifiers.

Again, send all additions and corrections to me. Thanks to Kaliya Hamlin, Neil Macehiter and Mike Jones for their input.