National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) Steering Group Secretariat Cooperative Agreement

NIST is soliciting proposals from eligible proposers to establish a Steering Group in support of the NSTIC Program (see http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/NSTICstrategy_041511.pdf) and to provide ongoing secretarial, administrative, and logistical support for the Steering Group. The recipient organization will support the Steering Group consistent with the Recommendations for Establishing an Identity Ecosystem Governance Structure for the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (“Governance Recommendations”) (see http://www.nist.gov/nstic/2012-nstic-governance-recs.pdf). The role of the Steering Group Secretariat will be to administer the process for policy and standards development for the Identity Ecosystem Framework in accordance with the NSTIC Guiding Principles in the Strategy. The Steering Group Secretariat will also ensure that accreditation authorities validate participants’ adherence to the requirements of the Identity Ecosystem Framework. The Strategy describes accreditation authority on page 25 as: “An accreditation authority assesses and validates identity providers, attribute providers, relying parties, and identity media, ensuring that they all adhere to an agreed-upon trust framework. Accreditation authorities can issue trustmarks to the participants that they validate.”