The Verifiable Claims Task Force

A Task Force of the Web Payments Interest Group


Verifiable Claims Telecon

Minutes for 2016-01-19

Matt Stone is scribing.

Topic: Update on Past and Upcoming Interviews

VCTF was officially approved in mid-Dec - this is the first official meeting.
Manu Sporny: Our goal is to establish the need for charter - by interviewing folks like Brad Hill et. al.
Manu Sporny: We are focusing on individuals who have expertise in security, identity, payments, etc.
Manu Sporny: First interview with Brad Hill: http://w3c.github.io/vctf/meetings/2016-01-08/
Shane McCarron: Voip-vctf: 5e9 is ShaneM
Manu Sporny: His concers: fraud, trust, slow evolution of agent centric protocols.
Dave Longley: Suggested that there is "room in the W3C" for us to do this work - ie. fairly supportive
Heather Schlegel: Question: What is the criteria for selecting thse experts?
Manu Sporny: Criteria: generally organic from W3C where someone asks something like "have you spoken to Brad Hill abou that?"
Heather Schlegel: Thanks. Have you considered doing a baseline level of external research? To find other experts that may not already be connected to w3c?
Dave Longley: Criteria for selection is their history and experience in the identity and security space
Dave Longley: And W3C management suggestions.
Heather Schlegel: Is there desire to expand the circle of experts?
Manu Sporny: Yes -that's where we are right now. this is the second round of discussion w/ people that we need to talk to beyond the 45 companies and interested parties we started with last year
Heather Schlegel: OK. I understand. That makes sense.
Manu Sporny: We're scoping this round to a narrow set of experts that we can connect w/ in a tight timeframe
Manu Sporny: Objective for completion is mid-Feb
Arie Y. Levy-Cohen: A friend of Erik Anderson's and mine (Jonathan Mohan) shared this with us and I thought it might be worth looking into for the VCTF in case it was worth pursuing: https://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/867797 (Contact Person is: Anil John)
Heather Schlegel: Is the list of criteria posted some where?
Manu Sporny: Invite team to nominate others experts if you know one. The bar if vary high for us to engage based on the community that we already have access to
Shane McCarron: Not that we don't want to hear from people! If people have use cases they should contribute them. Manu is talking about people we would conduct in depth interviews with. Right Manu?
Erik Anderson: Concerned that it's address primarily by the web community and finance is missing.
Manu Sporny: General criteria: identity, cryptography, payments experience for 10+ years. and we suspect that person will give us a "unique perspective"
Arie Y. Levy-Cohen: Discussing link above
Arie Y. Levy-Cohen: The 40+ banks are keen to understand/pursue identity issues
Heather Schlegel: I might have some insight as to why financials are not getting involved (I worked for the innovation division of Swift for some time)
Manu Sporny: Ian Jacobs is W3C Project Lead for Web Payments
Manu Sporny: Our discussion is concerned with why the financial institutions aren't engaging in the w3c process.
Heather Schlegel: And I follow/research the fintech space very closely as part of my research
Manu Sporny: We'd love the help, Heather!
Heather Schlegel: Banks have their own consortium - Swift that does a similar task, creating standards.
Manu Sporny: Heatherv, SWIFT is part of the Web Payments CG - they're aware of this task force.
Heather Schlegel: How do I signal I want to talk? (new to w3c process)
Arie Y. Levy-Cohen: Suggests that banks feel that work toward standards are based on directives from regulators, rather than driving the outcome
Arie Y. Levy-Cohen: Also there isn't a clear "owner" internally at the bank to do standards work.
Arie Y. Levy-Cohen: Each internal discipline/department has an opinion
Heather Schlegel: Recommend an outreach program to particpants where they're already engaged with "SWIFT?"
Erik Anderson: There are so many working groups and standards in flight right now, may are asking how they can could contribute and what happens it the standards fail
Erik Anderson: Finance is looking for the "right technology" to track assets and now on is providing it right now
Manu Sporny: Participants in the Web Payments IG: https://www.w3.org/2000/09/dbwg/details?group=73816&public=1
Manu Sporny: There is a web payments working group. some financial institutions are engaged, but not enough. Verifiable claims work "is not going to wait for them to join" we have enough education and health care groups involved.
Heather Schlegel: This all makes sense. It is a big beast to try to manage. Thanks.
Manu Sporny: We may end up with a standard that is targeted to Ed and Health Care, and hopefully banks will be able to use it as well
Manu Sporny: We're supposed to be proposing a charter that's workable - it's getting narrower, informed by the experts that we're interviewing
Manu Sporny: Consensus - develop a dataformat that expresses a claim. worry about protocols for transference later
Erik Anderson: Who on the call mentioned "Digital Asset Grid"?
Heather Schlegel: That was me.

Topic: Plan (or lack thereof) for Face-to-Face in February

Manu Sporny: In dec were planning to go to web payments meeting in SFO in late Feb. we missed our window of opportunity to plan it.
Heather Schlegel: If you want more details about DAG. I produced/wrote/shot a scenario video and documentary about it: Scenario: https://youtu.be/Wzsqtdx40qg Documentary: https://youtu.be/98RYtKQaWcA
Erik will send use cases for other attributes like mortgages and insurance policies.
Next opportunity: Internet Identity workshop in April
Heather Schlegel: YES! You should meet at IIW! I am shooting interviews for my next doc film there! April 26-28
Want charter to discuss in March for w3c - need to pick up the pace.
Heather Schlegel: (I am producing a new film on Internet Identity)

Topic: Stalled Work

Reviewing Deliverables. - have benefits - don't have "use cases" (this is a fundamental deliverable)
Do we expect use cases to be influenced by the interviews?
Manu Sporny: Some, but let's move the content we had previously devleped to the w3c format
Shane McCarron: I am happy to help get stuff into W3C format if we are resource limited
Daniel C. Burnett: I can do that too. I didn't realize we were waiting on that now.
Manu Sporny: Need to work on the charter - would be proposal. w3c staff suggests focus on the dataformat - might take a year to 1.5yr
Eric Korb: Is it possible to establish a target timeline?
Shane McCarron: Where is the source of the current use cases?
Shane McCarron: Eric_cell, let's target getting the existing use cases stuff into a respec document in the github repo in the next week. It is pretty quick once we get rolling
Shane McCarron: ... Then we can do a group review, integrate new use cases, etc and get it out there before the WPIG face to face at the end of Feb
Shane McCarron: All steps
Shane McCarron: Eric_cell: okay - understood. I will start working on a timeline document so everyone can see it.