Members of the OASIS Identity Metasystem Interoperability Technical Committee have approved a Committee Draft version of the "Identity Metasystem Interoperability Version 1.0" specification for public review. The review period extends through April 27, 2009. This specification is intended for developers and architects who wish to design identity systems and applications that interoperate using the Identity Metasystem Interoperability specification. An Identity Selector and the associated identity system components allow users to manage their Digital Identities from different Identity Providers, and employ them in various contexts to access online services.  In this specification, identities are represented to users as 'Information Cards'. An Information Card provides a visual representation of a Digital Identity for the end user.  Information Cards contain a reference to an IP/STS that issues Security Tokens containing the Claims for that Digital Identity. The 'Information Card Model' refers to the use of Information Cards containing metadata for obtaining Digital Identity claims from Identity Providers and then conveying them to Relying Parties under user control. Information Cards can be used both at applications hosted on Web sites accessed through Web browsers and rich client applications directly employing Web services. The Identity Metasystem Interoperability specification prescribes a subset of the mechanisms defined in WS-Trust 1.2, WS-Trust 1.3, WS-SecurityPolicy 1.1, WS-SecurityPolicy 1.2, and WS-MetadataExchange to facilitate the integration of Digital Identity into an interoperable token issuance and consumption framework using the Information Card Model.

It documents the Web interfaces utilized by browsers and Web applications that utilize the Information Card Model. Finally, it extends WS-Addressing's endpoint reference by providing identity information about the endpoint that can be verified through a variety of security means, such as https or the wealth of WS-Security specifications. This profile constrains the schema elements/extensions used by the Information Card Model, and behaviors for conforming Relying Parties, Identity Providers, and Identity Selectors.

Article cited by Robin Cover in XML Daily Newslink.