Proposal for OASIS Biometric Web Services Technical Committee

Invitation: OASIS Discussion List for Biometric Web Services (bws-discuss)

Subject: New OASIS Discussion List: bws-discuss
From: Mary McRae <mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org>
To: bws-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:33:44 -0400

OASIS members have requested that we open a new discussion list, regarding a possible new OASIS Biometric Web Services TC. The proposal conforms to our rules and is set forth below. Standards always are improved by broad participation. OASIS encourages open discussions about possible new TCs, by offering a dedicated e-mail list for 90 days, upon member request. The address of this list will be:

     bws-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org

Anyone, including OASIS members and non-members, may subscribe to this list in order to discuss the merits and possibility of the proposed project. The list is now open, and can be joined by sending a blank email message to:

     bws-discuss-subscribe@lists.oasis-open.org [1]

The discussion list is governed by Section 2.1 of the OASIS TC Process [2], and may last up to 90 days. Typically, participants in the list will determine whether there is sufficient interest to form an OASIS TC, and then collaborate on a draft TC charter for submission. Only subscribers to the list will have the ability to post to it. If you do not wish to subscribe, but would like to monitor the discussion, archives of the discussion list will be visible at [3].

Please feel free to forward this announcement to any other appropriate lists. OASIS is an open standards organization, and welcomes your feedback. We look forward to assisting parties interested in joining the community of implementers, technologists, academics and end-users contributing to open standardization for e-business and information exchange.

  Mary P McRae
  Director, Standards Development
  Technical Committee Administrator
  OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society
  email: mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org 
  web: www.oasis-open.org
  twitter: @fiberartisan  #oasisopen
  phone: 1.603.232.9090

  Standards are like parachutes: they work best when they're open.

[1] Additional assistance is available, if needed, from the contacts listed at: http://www.oasis-open.org/who/contactus.php
[2] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process-2009-07-30.php#discussLists
[3] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/bws-discuss/

Proposal: OASIS Discussion List for Biometric Web Services (bws-discuss)

Discussion List Proposal

OASIS TC Discussion List Proposal (BWS-discuss)

This document is a proposal for the creation of a discussion list for evaluating the interest in proposing a new OASIS TC for biometric web services (BWS).

Name

The name of the discussion list should be bws-discuss

Statement of Scope

The purpose of the TC under consideration is to define, enhance, and maintain open standards that facilitate the use of biometrics and biometric operations over a services oriented architecture, such as web services. At its inception, the TC will specifically target web services for biometric devices: a specification describing a suite of sensor- and modality-agnostic 'low-level' acquisition operations (e.g., sensor initialization, sensor configuration, data capture, data transfer).

Proposers

• Kevin Mangold, kevin.mangold@nist.gov, NIST
• Ross J. Micheals, ross.micheals@nist.gov, NIST
• Cathy Tilton, cathy.tilton@daon.com, Daon
• Brad Wing, bradford.wing@nist.gov, NIST
• Gregory Zektser, zekster_gregory@bah.com, Booz Allen Hamilton

List Leader

Ross J. Micheals, ross.micheals@nist.gov, NIST

[Announcement source]

Initial Draft Charter Proposal for OASIS Biometric Web Services TC

[Draft] Charter for the OASIS Biometric Web Services (BWS) TC

12 August 2010

DRAFT for Public Review

TC Name

OASIS Biometric Web Services (BWS) Technical Committee

Statement of Purpose

Despite existing efforts, there remain opportunities for improving the state-of-the-art in interoperability among biometric-related systems or system components.

The purpose of this TC is to define, enhance, and maintain open standards that facilitate the use of biometrics and biometric operations over a services oriented architecture, such as web services. Improving interoperability is a key enabler for making biometrics more viable within multifactor authentication. The TC will help bring parity to biometrics as compared to other technologies, such as cryptographic certificate use and management, where web service standards are markedly more mature.

Improving interoperability through open standards is a primary purpose of this TC. Therefore, this TC is dedicated to the concept that conformance to the standard(s) will imply a guaranteed, well-documented, level of interoperability. Additionally, standards developed in the TC should both minimize and segregate components where requiring unique knowledge might hinder interoperability.

Scope of Work

The purpose of the TC is to provide a general, yet targeted forum for developing a suite of open standards that will foster and accelerate the use of web services within the biometrics community.

List of Deliverables

The defined scope of the TC is designed to encourage the introduction of documents and standards that will further contribute to the use of web services between and within biometric systems or system components.

Additional documents and standards are both anticipated and encouraged

At its inception, the TC will target two different standards:

1. Biometric Devices. A standard for controlling the 'low-level' operations necessary for performing biometric acquisition (e.g., sensor initialization, sensor configuration, capture, sensor data download).

2. Biometric Workflow Description Language. A standard for describing a specific series of biometric acquisition activities, along with the conditions and rules that might dynamically change its execution.

For example, a language that could describe, in machine and human readable formats, a construct such as "If the presenter is a glasses wearer, take one face photo with their glasses on, and one with their glasses off. Otherwise, take two face photos (no glasses)."

The provided names and scopes are tentative: the scope and precise nature of these standards are expected to evolve as TC work progresses.

To demonstrate interoperability, the TC aims to include cross-implementation interoperability testing as a core component of any reference implementation activities.

Audience

The primary audience for the final output of this TC is anyone involved with producing or consuming biometrics-related operations over web services. This includes, but is not necessarily limited to, developers, integrators, and owners of systems that incorporate biometrics.

Language

All business of the technical committee shall be conducted in English.

Comments

Feedback on this draft should be directed to Ross J. Micheals, rossm@nist.gov

[Source: see the 27-September-2010 draft in PDF or Word (.docx) format, as posted to the bws-discuss list. Note there the contribution from Phillip H. Griffin on the X9F work ("X9.73 CMS and X9.96 XML CMS were merged to form X9.73:2010 CMS - ASN.1 and XML... Effectively, X9.84:2010 is independent of the format and type of the biometric payloads that it protects..."

Additional References

• NIST Demonstrates Wireless Biometric Sensor Interoperability Prototype. See summary in Daily Newslink
• Biometric Web Services: Interoperability for Multimodal Biometric Sensors. NIST presentation at 2010 Biometric Consortium Conference & Technology Expo

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive.