2022-10-26 Steering Committee Plenary Meeting Notes

Agenda 

• Agenda Review (1 min)
• Announcements and New Business (5 min)
• Upcoming Meeting Dates Review (2 min)
• Guest Speaker:
  • Allan Thomson - Avast
  • Charles Walton - Avast
  • Drummond Reed - Avast
• Open Discussion

Attendance

• Judith Fleenor (ToIP - Director of Strategic Engagement)
• Drummond Reed (Avast)
• Allan Thomson (Avast)
• Charles Walton (Avast)
• Abbie B (CVS)
• Wenjing Chu (Futurewei)
• Neil Thomson ()
• Dmitry Barinov (Avast)
• RJ Reiser (Liquid Avatar)
• Scott Perry (Schellman)
• Steven Milstein ()
• Steve McCown ()
• Bryn Robinson-Morgan (Mastercard)
• Mike Vesey (IDRamp)
• Elisa Trevino (Linux Foundation)

• Recording

Link

• Presentation (Google Slides)

Notes

Agenda Review 

Judith Fleenor kicked off the meeting and presented to agenda and the anti trust policy.

Announcements and New Business 

Judith Fleenor  went over the announcements and new business topics by kicking off with the update regarding the Membership Renewal notices that went out with the incorrect fee amounts and shared that the invoices will be sent out December 1st. Judith Fleenor continued to share updates regarding the Budget Committee meeting with @Abbie, Scott Perry and Drummond Reed

Judith Fleenor continued that we're seeking Commnunication Committee members to engage in our efforts and shared the update for work that Ajay Madhok will be helping the ToIP Foundation produce to help grow our outreach efforts via social media by creating new content. 

Greenhouse Gas, new EFWG task force, Data Modeling & Representation Working Groups (DMRWG) are on the calendar and meeting; each group is welcoming new members to engage and participate as they're available. Additionally, the HXWG group has their Overcoming Human Harm Challenges in Digital Identity Ecosystem Whitepaper ready for community review here. EFWG Speaker, Web5: What it is, and how we'll get there with Gabe Cohen and Daniel Buchner is October 27 8amPDT/11amEST/15:00 UTC/17:00 CEST. Lastly the Tech Arch TF is working toward reference architecture completion by IIW.

Judith Fleenor shared the Steering Committee Calendar changes due to holidays and notified the group that the November meeting it cancelled due to holidays, conference and travel scheduled. Additionally, it was announced that the December Steering Committee meeting Plenary will be help on December 7th at noon PT as a hour and a half meeting to discuss and finalize the ToIP Foundation 2023 Budget, with a secondary meeting scheduled for December 14th in the event that a decision is not made during the December 7th meeting. 

All Member meetings were also canceled for the month of November and the December meeting has been pushed up to Wednesday December 14th at 10am PT. This will be a holiday celebration via zoom. 

ToIP Interoperability Certification Framework 

Judith Fleenor introduced the Avast team for the Avast Interoperability Certification Framework presentation.

Drummond Reed wanted to share a deep dive proposal for creating an Interoperability Certification Framework and kicked off the presentation. He shared the JDF charter for the ToIP Foundation that includes the following scope statement "The Purpose of the Trust over IP Foundation (alternatively, "ToIP Foundation") is to define and support a complete architecture and interoperability certification framework for Internet-scale digital trust that combines both cryptographic trust at the machine layer and human trust at the business, legal and social layers as defined in Hyperledger Aries RFC 0289 (or its successor as identified in the RFC document itself). As a point of reference to be clear about what that means for the ToIP Foundation. He shared that the work that they've been doing in the TSWG has provided them direction to illustrate the work that they're doing. 

Proposed Strategic Objective

Drummond Reed mentioned that the work on the Technology Architecture Spec has helped to create a roadmap and the specific development tracks we  are following to fully realize the ToIP stack. Additionally he shared the work they're doing to create a companion document called the Evolution of the ToIP Stack that illustrates the progress of each development track. Drummond Reed shared the roadmap diagram of the illustration that explains the ToIP Technology Architecture Specification. He went on to shared that Avast would liek to propose that the Steering Committee make it an explicit strategic objective of the Foundation to establish an interoperability certification framework within two years. Drummond Reed and the Avast team would like to propose achieving this goal within two years of publishing the V1 ToIp Technology Architecture Specification. Open standards experts within Avast believe the planning and development of such a framework–designed to test commercial-grade implementations at scale–is a two year project. 

Allan Thomson shared that there's a significant effort to achieve interoperability certification frameworks that can talk to other things. He believe that we need to 1. Help advance the necessary component specifications at all four layers. 2. as a Foundation will need to develop a ToIP Interoperatibiltuy Certification Framework against which third parties can perform certification of implementation and use cases. a. This framework will identity roles/Persona/Profiles of technology and how they may certify software acting as that persona. 3. one or more ToIp members will need to produce at least one Technology that matches at least one ToIP Interoperability Profile.

Allan Thomson he shared a diagram that illustrates the necessity for a Component Specifications Track that is essential. He shared that the advancing component specifications is critical to help identify which component specs will be mature enough when it not entirely in our control. ToIp members and our community as a whole can push to finish enough component specs to create at least one full-stack interoperability profile. 

1. Layer 1 DID registry specs (both tech and governance)
2. Layer 2 wallet/agent specs (especially EU & Canada)
3. Layer 2 trust spanning protocol specs (DIDComm et al)
4. Layer 3 credential exchange specs (Aries, OIDC4VC, ISO)
5. Layer 4 UI/UX specs (FIDO, Secure QR codes, etc.)

Developing a ToIP Interoperability Certification Framework

Allan Thomson believes that just delivering a document for interoperability is not enough in the market. He believes we have two options to achieve success. 1. Self-certification with published results/verification/reviews (similar to STIXPreferred, Wifi Alliance) 2. Certification lab funding or partner that agrees to act as certification lab based on TICF.  We need to define roles/personas/profiles that fit into relevant use cases for interoperability. He went on to share that depending on which option is chosen, define what additional resources, review boards, and infrastructure must be setup to support certifications. 

Allan Thomson shared additional details regarding the ToIP Interoperability Profiles and how critical it is to think about the entire ecosystem from a systematic perspective so that we can leverage profiles to demonstrate the roadmap for the user/vendor experience. 

Drummond Reed shared the next steps if we're in agreement that we need to form a ToIP Interoperability Working Group. Charlie Walton believes that we're in a position to take a stance in this area to help drive the needs at a large scale. Avast believes this is key to their engagement with ToIP Foundation. Drummond Reed shared a final slide that details the creation of a new working group focused on interoperability. The proposition that ToIP members who are serious about this strategic objective start the journey by forming this WG. The goal would be to form this group in December and then start meeting on a monthly cadence in January 2023. 

Open Discussion -

Dmitry shared that from a technology perspective that he's excited to help drive the initiative for the ToIP Foundation. He shared that this discussion is happening in other forums.

Scott Perry shared that he understands the value of certification in the marketplace. He believes that we may have a challenge as we're providing an architecture in technology and governance for the marketplace and we don't have alignment. He also shared that be disagrees with self-certification

Actions:

• Judith Fleenor to send out email to all SC members to listen to the recording and weigh in via email list
• Judith Fleenor to take a consensus poll before IIW.