Information Cards, also abbreviated Infocards, are the technical foundation for, amongst others, Microsoft CardSpace and The Higgins Project driven by Novell. They will gain momentum significantly due the announcement of the Information Card Foundation (ICF). Amongst the founding members are Equifax, Google, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, PayPal, Aristotle, ATE Software, BackgroundChecks.com, FuGen Solutions, Fraunhofer Institute, Fun Communications, Gemalto, IDology, ooTao, Parity Communications, Ping Identity, Privo, Wave Systems, and WSO2. The list ist completed by several invited expert from different companies, including T-Systems.
The initiative will work with several other projects and standards bodies, including Apache, The Bandit Project, Concordia, Microsoft Windows CardSpace, OASIS, OSIS, The OpenID Foundation, The Higgins Project, The Liberty Alliance, and W3C.
The impressive list of members, including some of the leading IT vendors worldwide, proves that Information Cards are established as a core mechanism of user-centric Identity Management, with growing visibility and relevance.
The ICF’s target is to support the interoperability and implementation of Information Cards, but as well of additional policies and guidelines for the use of Information Cards with respect to social, legal, and privacy requirements.
Given the increasing importance of OpenID as standard for IDs in the Web and the (implemented and planned) improvements of OpenID and Information Cards, these are from the KCP perspective the core standards for Identity 2.0. We expect that the broad support for Information Cards will result in a strong increase of Information Cards use in eBusiness within the next 6 to 18 months.