The Identity Ecosystem Steering Group (IDESG) has been established as a new organization led by the private sector in conjunction with, but independent of the Federal Government. As a key stakeholder and active participant in the Identity Ecosystem, the government has funded Trusted Federal Systems, Inc., through a competitive grant, to provide technical, administrative and operational support for the Identity Ecosystem Steering Group. IDESG is an open collaboration charged with realizing the goals of NSTIC: National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (http://www.nist.gov/nstic), helping individuals and organizations utilize secure, efficient, easy-to-use and interoperable identity credentials to access online services in a manner that promotes confidence, privacy, choice and innovation.

Helping individuals and organizations utilize secure, efficient, easy-to-use and interoperable identity credentials to access online services in a manner that promotes confidence, privacy, choice and innovation. The NSTIC calls for a vibrant Identity Ecosystem where identity solutions adhere to four Guiding Principles: * Identity solutions will be privacy-enhancing and voluntary * Identity solutions will be secure and resilient * Identity solutions will be interoperable * Identity solutions will be cost-effective and easy to use

The Digital Humanities field is addressing this at the academic level. There is so much resistance to collaboration when sharing means someone else may publish your idea first, while at the same time, multiple operating/networked computers can leveraged to do a lot more work and discover a lot more when people work together. HASTAC is a good resource for learning about digital collaboration in the Humanities. In fact they have just launched a competition about building trust in collaborative environments focusing on education, youth and privacy issues.

open-glam is a discussion list of the Open Knowledge Forum for those interested inbopen data and open content in the cultural heritage field.

OpenGeoportal.org is a new site that brings together geospatial professionals, developers, metadata specialists, and librarians to coordinate the Open Geoportal (OGP) project. The Open Geoportal is a collaboratively developed, open source, federated web application to rapidly discover, preview, and retrieve geospatial data from multiple repositories.

A number of universities are partnering on developing geospatial metadata and a tool that can scrape datasets from various sources to display (and overlay!) on a single, federated interface.