The Intersection of Policies, Standards & Best Practices for Robust Public Sector Cloud Deployments

Introduction

Last week I was invited to attend the 2012 International Oasis Cloud Symposium.

I was very impressed. The attendance was not large—in fact—the organizers limited the number of attendees to 125 people. I was not able to attend the first day, but the second day was lively with many interesting presentations and discussions.

I won’t go over the complete agenda, if you want to it can be located in PDF format here.

Overall I would say every presentation given was worth listening to and the information was both valuable and informative. Not all of the presentations have been posted yet but a good number of them—including mine—can be found at this location.

I wanted to highlight a few of the presentations that were especially interesting. Again, I think all of them are worth looking at, but here are some highlights.

Privacy by Design

The day started out with the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario Canada—Dr. Ann Cavoukian—giving a presentation via videoto the group on Privacy by Design. Her message was that she and Dr. Dawn Jutla—more about Dr. Jutla in a second—are co-chairing a technical committee on Privacy by Design for software Engineers.

“It’s all about developing code samples and documentation for software engineers and coders to embed privacy by design into technology. We are going to drill down into the “how to” in our technical committee.”

Following the video by Dr. Cavoukian, Dr. Dawn Jutla gave a presentation about Privacy by Design (PbD).

Now I have heard of Dr. Cavoukian and the PbD movement. But I had never been exposed to any details. The details were amazing and I like the 7 Foundational Principles.

1. Proactive not Reactive; Preventative not Remedial

2. Privacy as the Default Setting

3. Privacy Embedded into Design

4. Full Functionality—Positive-Sum, not Zero-Sum

5. End-to-End Security—Full Lifecycle Protection

6. Visibility and Transparency—Keep it Open

7. Respect for User Privacy—Keep it User-centric

These are sound principles that make a lot of sense. So much so that I invited Dr. Jutla to attend the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) and to jointly present with me a discussion about Privacy and Identity in an API Economy.

Dr. Jutla agreed and we will lead the discussion on both Tuesday and Wednesday of next week (October 23, 24) at IIW.

If you look at the agenda, the rest of the speakers presenting on privacy were stellar. I learned a lot.

Summary

I strongly recommend looking over the agenda and reviewing the presentations that interest you. For most organizations, this should be every plenary and every discussion group.

I was also impressed with the Oasis’ ability and willingness to invite seemingly competitive groups, like iso.org, ANSI, and Kantara. This is the way standards body should work when it has the best interest of the industry and objective of open standardization.

Kudos to Laurent Liscia and the entire OASIS organization for the execution of a great event.