Identity Management Systems is the cornerstone of creation of Semantic Web for both Business and eGovernment sectors. This is the very base for future development of Web 2.0 systems interoperability and eGovernment Systems. What is important in those kinds of systems? Well, first of all that new Web 2.0 system is quite a user centric system. Basically systems support only content and data creation processes but not create themselves. Each user creates the content himself
which creates in its turn the Web of different contents from one single user all over the web. The best example is the Blog content creation for Mr. John Johnson. He has his personal “private” blog on www.livejournal.com, and then he has a business Blog on corporate web-site www.semanticweb.com/johnson, photo album on Flicker www.flickr.com/johnjohnson
and maybe even one WordPress Blog about airplanes on www.arimania.org/blog. This makes a huge content created by single person available online but not interoperable. For example, if Mr. Johnson wishes to move some photos from Flicker to his private LiveJournal Blog he should provide LiveJournal his personal credential of Flicker account which is also Yahoo account credential and make his yahoo mail available. The possibilities of Federated identity management systems are also
very limited in these cases. Imagine if Yahoo and LiveJournal with sign the agreement of one shared XML ontology. Even then the problems with linkage of accounts will arise as people don’t like linking account really much. There are much more problems of systems interoperability and possible creation of Semantic Web.

But there is much more possibilities of real interoperability of any Web 2.0 System based on IDM. Why should we precisely present Web 2.0 systems? Just because those systems are user content driven and include either private/analyzed information about person or content created/collected by the same user. A very good example is the difference of simple Britannica Online Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia. Both are the encyclopaedias but one has been created by editor’s team and the other one by people. Created and edited by individuals this system is much more flexible for semantic interoperability than any other databases. This interoperability with base of IDM is possible and firstly has been presented for eGovernment.

Interoperability within the eGovernment means the ability of information and communication technology systems, as well as, of the business processes they support in order to exchange data and enable the sharing of information and knowledge (IDABC 2007). First time the idea of Interoperability of eGovernment services based on identity has been discussed in article called “eID Interoperability as a Key Enabler for eGovernment” published in monthly magazine of IDABC. There was mentioned that a key factor for development of eGovernment is Interoperability of all cross-sector eServices. eEurope Action Plan has outlined importance of Interoperability and therefore the IDABC decision is based on a framework of common principles and rules, as well as, on the agreement on open standards, which is the most important, and identity interfaces for the implementation of interoperability between systems, applications, business processes and actors producing or using eGovernment services. As authors of the project say the electronic identity management systems are fundamental for allowing secure access to and normal use of eGovernment services in all over Europe. As many of State already creating digital identity management system IDABC took initiative to prevent these developments from creating new digital barriers across borders, and to set of actual requirements and standards that must be agreed to enable European eID interoperate and create the framework of semantic interoperability(IDABC 2007).

Albert Poghosyan

However, in the frame of looking into Identity Management systems and the topic of Semantic Web development it is very important to review it from two different sides: Business and Public domains of semantic interoperability. If we were mainly
talking about business environment, it is a completely different case for eGovernment systems interoperability.

Typically, all project started for creating interoperability for eGovernment’s services seeks to create general ontology for sharing the information. The point of departure in Semantic Web for eGovernment systems is to enable machines to find their way around in a world of meaningful objects of Governmental web systems. Actually, it comes for informational resources on eGovernment websites (made accessible by public internet or secured intranet) can be based a variety of electronic products:

•  information elements (presentation, multimedia and actively aggregated content),
•  files (e.g. documents, forms and client applications),
•  transactions (processed by inside systems or backend interfaces),
•  links (to other sites and their resources),
•  services (e.g. identity management system),
•  user related objects (e.g. citizen private information) (Klischewski 2003).

All this is meaningful for eGovernment stakeholders of information sharing, all this is searched for and being used – thus all of this is useful for semantic markup. Same electronic products are interested in business cases with any organization or
companies but in case of eGovernment interoperability will be based on values of citizen identity and Government information flow priorities which makes Semantic based on specific standards (Klischewski 2003). Some important fields of
Semantic Web problems in the creation of eGovernment services have already been identified as lack of user experience, lack of interoperability, poor document management and barriers in information retrieval.

Albert Poghosyan

Actually the emantic Web started not from XML data sharing which is quite diffused opinion within Internet Users. The whole idea of Semantic Web has been created as far as have been uploaded any information in HTML format on the shared server, here other machines could access and naturally understand that information. Whenever the data could be processed directly or indirectly by machines there will exist the Semantic Web (Stuckenschmidt and Van
Harmelen 2005).

Semantic Web has quite strange development and emerging in the situation of fast development of the Internet. First it was the idea of data sharing within applications and the attitude to the data was just as to garbage (concepts of “Garbage In, Garbage Out” GIGO) (Daconta, Obrst et al. 2003).
From the point of change of information and data importance, the concept of Semantic Data has been changed through different four steps described as follows:

1. Text/Database (pre-XML);
2. XML document within applications (Data sharing within one domain of application);
3. Taxonomy of XML (Already classified and hierarchical data possible to be share within multiple domains);
4. XML Ontology and rules (Now the data became so smart that could be understood by machines following the logical rules. It is described with concrete relations and bearing completely logical calculations based on “semantic algebra”.) (Daconta, Obrst et al. 2003)

More…So in this context the “Semantic Web is machine accessible web of smart data” (Daconta, Obrst et al. 2003).
According to W3C Semantic Web Activity, which is created form 2001, the Semantic Web is a web of data. And from that we can conclude that Semantic Web is the web of application independent data, which allows interoperability of
different systems within the Web (W3C 2007).

The development of Semantic Web for Business and Public sectors nowadays is much more important than ever ago. Fast emerging markets depend on Data sharing and Information Interoperability as they exchange millions of data information in each second. New technologies and concepts of Information systems architectures cannot work without essential information sharing and aggregation, which is only possible in the frame of Semantic Web development. Of course, there are also some very important problems that Semantic Web called on to solve. The problems are quite wide but mainly it is “Stovepipe Systems” where all components can work only with each other and Poor Content Aggregation. Unfortunately we didn’t go on really from screen scraping of the web pages. So in the frame of development of Web 2.0 systems the Semantic Web became extremely important both for business and for public sectors.

But what is the problem that the Semantic Web doesn’t really accoutre in face of recent technological development? There is a quite simple answer for that question: Conflicts. There are wide range of conflicts for Semantic web but basically all
conflicts could be categorized as Problems with Heterogeneity (simply the diversity of data) and Semantic Translation (Stuckenschmidt and Van Harmelen 2005).
So if we just overview the main problems of data diversity it would go this way:

1. Structural Conflicts (simply all problems of data structuring including here)

1. Integrity Conflicts,
2. Data Type Conflicts,
3. Naming Conflicts,
4. Multilateral Conflicts,
5. Meta-Level Conflicts;

2. Semantic Conflicts

1. Data Different Scales,
2. Different Value Ranges,
3. Domain Conflicts (Stuckenschmidt and Van Harmelen 2005).

Conflicts connected with Semantic translation are mainly rising from Simple Data Handling within the frame of Semantic Web. It is all problems denoted the resolution of semantic conflicts that occur between heterogeneous information systems in order to archive semantic interoperability (Stuckenschmidt and Van Harmelen 2005).
So here we occur to face the most important issue of Semantic Web: the semantic interoperability. Ontology-based information sharing based on fourth level of XML development is quite near to actual Semantic Web but still it exists only
in close systems.

Moreover, the professionals in this field are very sceptical about Semantic web. There are quite much problems involved in development process and no intelligent information on integration approaches and technologies. People are mainly concerned about almost impossible development of standard infrastructure of Semantic Web. First, it is connected with bad luck with Artificial Intelligence Creation and development in 1960s. Most of professionals believe that Semantic Web is the same as researching Artificial Intelligence. Secondly, it’s because the creation and support of this kind of solutions are very costly and difficult. Nobody would take the initiative to start creation of general Semantic Web which could lead to total involvement of different systems, but also it is just because there are no organizations or corporations which could influence whole web systems to start to use one general ontology (Daconta, Obrst et al. 2003).

Albert Poghosyan

Personal Identity Provider from VeriSign Labs has been updated with new design and better functionality. It is partially proved that VeriSign is really interested in OpenID development.

A variety of authentication and identification systems has been developed during the evolution of Information Technologies and Interactive Communication. But undoubted prerogative of most developments and innovations has been done by VeriSign Incorporation (www.verisign.com), which is no doubt the world leader of intelligence and security provider. In case one is up to write the history of the Internet and Information technologies, the best reference will be the History of VeriSign Inc, as any of its steps is a step towards the Internet development. Starting from 1995 when they started to sell SSL Certificates they have had the great purposeful behaviour to establish high security level and trust in the Network. And they definitely succeeded. Only a year later they opened the Digital ID centre - big developments in the security providing and huge achievements in Network solutions. In 2004 VeriSign introduced Unified Authentication system. In 2006 Personal Identity Provider project has already been released where a new technology is being used: OpenID. To be honest, I need to mention that the project is still free, but, potentially, it could be commercialised later. David Recordon who is in charge of the development of this technology while working on other projects is still working on this one which is a real prove that OpenID is going to be more and more  developed in the next few years.

Albert Poghosyan

The issues of identity management and authorization have been established from very old times whenever somebody decided to protect his property from foreign aggressors. That’s how it was in cities of old Europe - if they were protected with high walls they checked everybody who entered the city to determine who could harm their security from inside. On the market days it was a very big queue because everyone must be checked on the entrance. But after invention of trebuchet which was very effective to destroy the city walls they have to change the security strategy along with identity management strategy and that’s why trading in Middle Ages has started to develop very fast (Windley 2005). Though it is a very interesting example of identity management, there were more interesting cases, such as caliph’s harems which was a more intimate place. Even though the access to caliph’s harem was strictly bounded there where people who could access it. They were eunuchs who were castrated because of some reasons of security.

So if we look on the first example we will understand that traditional exclusionary security model – perimeter-based systems focused on keeping bad people out of the system – are not sufficient to protect the virtual systems (Lewis 2005), just because you are keeping out not only the bad but also all the others. But even we understand that long time ago by changing security strategy but from another point we can’t castrate all users just because they are going to use our system. Even though, now we are allowing users to access our private and intimate information, todays systems must create exclusionary security with an exclusionary access to applications and data that support core processes. And such exclusionary models are unattainable without Identity management.

Basically everything starts from the act of authentication. Authentication is the act of establishing or confirming something (or someone) as authentic, that is that claims made by or about the thing are true (Wikipedia 2006). Authenticating a person may mean to identify that the person is who he/she says he/she is. In case of organizations they can present their Trust Certificate, but in case of a person - it is just impossible without special technologies. However, in many cases authentication is the most important stage of Interaction. For a long time authentication procedures in the area of service provision was, of course, paper-based (even now some companies request scanned copy of passport by email). And probably the best examples of self identification were passport or driving licence. Meanwhile, with the arrival of digital technologies to our society, enabling the development of online services, it became clear that new forms of authentication are required for situations in which the digital user’s identity must be checked as part of an assessment of service entitlement. In last decade lots of complicated systems have been developed aiming to solve this issue. But let’s go a little deeper into evolution of these systems.

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JanRain, Microsoft, Sxip, and VeriSign will collaborate on interoperability between OpenID and Windows CardSpace(TM) to make the Internet safer and easier to use. Specifically:

• As part of OpenID’s security architecture, OpenID will be extended to allow relying parties to explicitly request and be informed of the use of phishing-resistant credentials.
• Microsoft recognizes the growth of the OpenID community and believes OpenID plays a significant role in the Internet identity infrastructure. Kim Cameron, Chief Architect of Identity at Microsoft, will work with the OpenID community on authentication and anti-phishing.
• JanRain, Sxip, and VeriSign recognize that Information Cards provide significant anti-phishing, privacy, and convenience benefits to users. Information Cards, based on the open WS-Trust standard, are available though Windows CardSpaceâ„¢.
• JanRain and Sxip, leading providers of open source code libraries for blogging and web sites, are announcing they will add support for the Information Cards to their OpenID code bases.
• JanRain, Sxip and VeriSign plan to add Information Card support to future identity solutions.
• Microsoft plans to support OpenID in future Identity server products.

The four companies have agreed to work together on a “Using Information Cards with OpenID” profile that will make it possible for other developers and service providers to take advantage of these technology advancements.
Dick Hardt, Sxip Identity
Kim Cameron, Microsoft
Michael Graves, VeriSign
Scott Kveton, JanRain

Source: http://blogs.verisign.com/infrablog/2007/02/verisign_microsoft_partners_to_1.php