Liberty Alliance, the global identity consortium working to build a more trusted Internet, today announced the launch of a new group formed to help governments speed the deployment of open standards and deliver more privacy-respecting and secure identity-based services to citizens worldwide. The Liberty Alliance eGovernment Group is open to all organizations interested in identifying and addressing common business, technical and policy challenges facing the public sector.

Liberty’s eGovernment Group is chaired by Colin Wallis of the New Zealand Government’s State Services Commission, and includes representation from government organizations from Denmark, Finland, France, Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as global and regional technology vendors and enterprises working in the government sector, such as ActivIdentity, The Boeing Company, Gemalto, NEC, Neustar, NTT and Sun Microsystems. This diverse mix of thought leaders deploying public sector identity management solutions will help ensure that the output of Liberty’s eGovernment group meets the real-world identity needs of governments, enterprises and citizens around the globe.

“The formation of the Liberty Alliance eGovernment Group demonstrates the wide scale demand for open and interoperable identity solutions among governments worldwide,” said Colin Wallis, chair of the Liberty Alliance eGovernment Group and senior analyst, standards, with the New Zealand government. “Liberty’s eGovernment group is bringing governments, educational organizations and enterprises together to facilitate the deployment of non-proprietary, trusted and user-controlled identity solutions in the public sector.”

Liberty Federation, which consists of ID-FF 1.1, 1.2 and SAML 2.0 specifications, and Liberty Web Services, which consists of ID-WSF 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0, are deployed extensively by governments around the world. A snapshot of some of the governments deploying Liberty’s open identity specifications is available at projectliberty.org/about/marketadoption.php.

About the Liberty Alliance eGovernment Group The Liberty Alliance eGovernment Group is the only global identity group addressing the technology, business and policy aspects of identity management in the government sector. Liberty’s eGovernment group is open to all Liberty members. Liberty membership for government and non-profit organizations is free of charge; information about how to become a member of Liberty’s eGovernment group is available by contacting Liberty Membership Director Andrew Shikiar at andrew@projectliberty.org.