Organizing Letter of Intent of the Agricultural Data Coordination Consortium (Ag DCC) – Work in Progress

Organizing Letter of Intent of the “Know your Food, Know your Farmer” Agricultural Data Coordination Consortium (Ag DCC) – Work in Progress

WHEREAS, today’s numerous agricultural and food supply chains are being called on more and more to provide two products. One, the traditional plant, animal, processed food or other commodity. And, two, authenticated, traceable data products identifying the source, age, and processes applied to the traditional commodity. While agricultural and food supply chains have been highly efficient in providing traditional commodity products foods, they face numerous technological and sociological challenges in effectively providing authenticated, traceable data products. There is a disconnect between the local farmer and consumers; there is too much distance between the average American and their farmer.

WHEREAS, in recognition of the foregoing, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has commenced a nation-wide effort to create new economic opportunities for supporting local farmers, strengthening rural communities, promoting healthy eating, and protecting natural resources by better connecting consumers with local producers. This effort is the “Know your Food, Know your Farmer” program (http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/knowyourfarmer?navtype=KYF&navid=KYF_MISSION)

WHEREAS, new advances in unambiguous product identification (e.g., radio frequency identification – RFID), the deployment of massive data centers around the world (i.e., “the Cloud”), the concurrent rise of virtual machines for maximizing digital spaces in the Cloud, the increasing available of low-cost software as a service (including social networking sites like FaceBook, Twitter, etc.), and new, technological means and functions for minimal data disclosures and granular data sharing by end-users, provide a convergence of technological opportunities for creating economic opportunities by better connecting consumers with local producers consistent with the USDA’s “Know your Food, Know your Farmer”.

NOW, THEREFORE, we, the undersigned, in recognition of the foregoing, do form the “Know your Food, Know Your Farmer” Agricultural Data Coordination Consortium ( Ag DCC).

THE INTENTS AND PURPOSES of the Ag DCC shall be for the networking of individuals, private entities, and public entities, all meeting and exchanging information in like-minded support of agricultural supply chain data coordination for the furtherance of the USDA’s Know your Food, Know your Farmer program.

The homepage for the Ag DCC shall be a sub-group to the ‘Data Ownership in the Cloud’ (http://tinyurl.com/datacloud) networking group on LinkedIn.

[Editor's Note: This is a work in progress and may be updated without notice. Membership in the Ag DCC is by invitation only. Membership in the Ag DCC requires (1) a LinkedIn profile and (2) membership in the Data Ownership in the Cloud networking group on LinkedIn. Only members of the Ag DCC may be signators to the final, organizing letter of intent for the Ag DCC. For further information, please contact the Editor or leave a comment.]

Update on Friday, January 8, 2010 at 11:14AM by Steve Holcombe

Due to the lack of activity with this LinkedIn sub-group, I closed it in January, 2010. But that's OK because, interestingly, the activity I was hoping for is actually occurring in a separate LinkedIn group called the Agricultural Funding Opportunities (AFO).

The Agricultural Funding Opportunities group is a collaborative research group originally established for coordinating activities in relation to the preparation of a grant application for USDA-NIFA-SCRI-002672 due 14 Jan 2010. The essential premise of the just filed $5M/5YR SCRI application is that providing supply chain participants (including consumers) with more control (i.e., traceability) over their data will increase the availability and quality of product data, and open up new, sustainable business models for both large and small companies. Now further agricultural funding opportunities are being examined by members of this group in the context of the large Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) RFAs solicited by the USDA on 22 March 2010.

This is an invitation-only group. But if you think you would be interested in joining this group to ACTIVELY search for ag funding opportunities, please let me know.

Best,

Steve Holcombe, Owner
Data Ownership in the Cloud
Agricultural Funding Opportunities
http://www.linkedin.com/in/steveholcombe
http://twitter.com/Steve_Holcombe

Update on Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:40AM by Steve Holcombe

The group identified above has now evolved into the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™. The WCTC is comprised at its core of researchers and collaborators from Oklahoma State University, North Dakota State University, Michigan State University, the University of Arkansas, and Pardalis, Inc., an Oklahoma advanced technology company. Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ is a trademark of Pardalis, Inc.

Silona Bonewald: Open Banking, metrics and money

The following entry entitled Open Banking, metrics and money and posted by Silona Bonewald on Friday, September 25th, 2009 to her blog, Persona Prime:

metrics metrics metrics

With an openbank I get to prove a concept with the most old fashioned metric there is – money…

for what is money than the most generally accepted metric?

I want to educate people about the ownership of their data. No better way than to attach it to their money.

Show them that Data is the new money.

No better way to prove to businesses that people care than to make alot of money off of it.

No better way to get other banks to follow suit than to take money away from them.

yep I am a bit of a more pragmatic gal these days…

Here's my comment ....

Silona,

Truly, data is becoming more and more the 'new money' ....

Data ownership matters because it holds forth the promise of empowering people with much more technological and political control of their information than that provided by conventional information technologies and legislated confidentiality protections.

Give people the opportunity to profit or otherwise benefit from their data products in the form of granular objects, and their valuable data will, ironically, become more accessible to all. Give people the opportunity to familiarly bank their data like they bank their money, and watch the political dynamics shift favorably toward a more data transparent, and data secure, world.

First, there was money. Then there came the banking of money. Now is the time for the Information Age to shift into a Data Banking Age full of new services, and new opportunities, not unlike those brought to us, and facilitated by, our very successful monetary banking systems.

But lest the reader thinks that you and I are too much out in 'left field', or that we are being too idealistic, I'd like to cite what Microsoft and the Information Card Foundation are currently doing that is bringing a realism to the idealism.

Windows CardSpace (aka Microsoft Information Cards), part of the .NET stack, is Microsoft's client software for the Identity Metasystem, an interoperable architecture for digital identity that enables people to have and employ a collection of digital identities based on multiple underlying technologies, implementations, and providers. When an Information Card-enabled application or website wishes to obtain information about the user, the application or website requests the publication of a particular set of claims authored by the user. The CardSpace user interface then appears, switching the display to the CardSpace service, which displays the user's registered identities. The user selects their InfoCard to verify their identity.

Kim Cameron, Chief Identity Officer, Microsoft, is seeking to extend Microsoft's Information Cards with 'minimum disclosures' (that is, claims granularly derived from Information Cards). See "Proposal for a Common Identity Framework: A User-Centric Identity Metasystem" by Kim Cameron, Reinhard Posch, Kai Rannenberg on October 9, 2008.

The granular control of identity in the form of claims is, I suggest, a form of 'data banking', and a form of technological 'data ownership'. Microsoft's CardSpace is now officially being marketed in the context of the 'Geneva Framework', a Claims Based Access Platform. By marketing its Geneva Framework, Microsoft is bringing data banking and data ownership closer and closer to the mainstream.

If the reader is interested in further reading, and hyperlinked citations, see my blog posts Banking on Granular Information Ownership and A User Centric Identity Metasystem.

[This comment previously posted in two parts to a version of Silona's blog post shared to the Data Ownership in the Cloud networking group on LinkedIn - http://tinyurl.com/datacloud]

Pardalis receives patent originals from Australia, China, and Mexico

September 18, 2009 —Pardalis, Inc. announced today the receipt of the following patent originals issued by Australia, China and Mexico.

• The original of Australian Patent No. 2002323103 issued August 9, 2007. This patent will remain in effect until August 12, 2022.
• The original of Chinese Patent No. ZL 200480037094.4 issued May 20, 2009. This patent will remain in force until September 23, 2024.
• The original of Mexican Patent No. 251,221 issued November 1, 2007. This patent will remain viable until August 20, 2022.

The receipt of these original patents represent another milestone in the continued, global expansion of Pardalis' parent patent, U.S. Patent #6,671,696, and its continuations.

The Pardalis 696 Patent was issued by the United States in 2003 and is entitled ‘Informational object authoring and distribution system’. Pardalis' 696 patent is also known as the parent patent for the Common Point Authoring™ system.

The critical means and functions of the Common Point Authoring™ system provide for user-centric authoring and registration of radically identified, immutable objects for further granular publication, by the choice of each author, among networked systems. The benefits of CPA include minimal, precise disclosures of personal and product identity data to networks fragmented by information silos and concerns over 'data ownership'.

“Australia, China, Mexico New Zealand and, of course, the United States are the countries that have so far issued one or more patents to Pardalis,” said Steve Holcombe, Pardalis’ CEO. “Given our track record of success, we also have high expectations for similar actions on our applications pending in Brazil, Canada, Europe, Hong Kong, India and Japan.”

About Pardalis, Inc.

Pardalis' Common Point Authoring™ system provides the first object-oriented supply chain solution for minimal identity and data disclosures for both people and products. For more information, see The Roots of Common Point Authoring or contact Steve Holcombe through the contact form of The Pardalis Data Ownership Blog.

Roger Dean interviews Kim Cameron, Chief Msft Identity Architect

Roger Dean interviews Kim Cameron, chief architect of identity and distinguised engineer for Microsoft. Interviewed at the european e-identity management conference, 26th June 2009.

See also A User-Centric Identity Metasystem found at Kim Cameron's website of www.identityblog.com.

A User-Centric Identity Metasystem

Introduction to A User-Centric Identity Metasystem -

This paper proposes a framework for protecting privacy and avoiding the unnecessary propagation of identity information while facilitating exchange of specific information needed by Internet systems to personalize and control access to services. It also sets out factors to be taken into consideration when deciding where the standardization of such a framework should be brought about. Information systems that co-operate to originate, control and consume identity information have been called identity systems. The evolution of the Internet requires increased interoperability of these systems. Such interoperability demands an abstract model that encompasses the characteristics of all co-operating identity systems. We call this abstract model the Identity Metasystem. Describing, designing, deploying and managing identity systems in accordance with this model will facilitate the interworking of identity components:

• from different manufacturers;
• under different managements;
• of different levels of complexity;
• based on different protocols ;
• employing different syntaxes;
• conveying different semantics; and
• of different ages.

Editor's note ...

With this paper, Kim Cameron, Chief Identity Officer, Microsoft, is seeking to extend Microsoft's Information Cards with 'minimum disclosures' (that is, claims granularly derived from Information Cards). See also Roger Dean interviews Kim Cameron, Chief Msft Identity Architect.

Windows CardSpace (aka Microsoft Information Cards), part of the .NET stack, is Microsoft's client software for the Identity Metasystem, an interoperable architecture for digital identity that enables people to have and employ a collection of digital identities based on multiple underlying technologies, implementations, and providers. When an Information Card-enabled application or website wishes to obtain information about the user, the application or website requests the publication of a particular set of claims authored by the user. The CardSpace user interface then appears, switching the display to the CardSpace service, which displays the user's registered identities. The user selects their InfoCard to verify their identity. See Identity Selector Interoperability Profile V1.0, Microsoft Corporation (April, 2007). See also US Patent 7,149,977: Virtual calling card system and method.

Microsoft's CardSpace is now officially being marketed in the context of the 'Geneva Framework', a Claims Based Access Platform. See also The United Federation of Cloud Providers.

I'm filing A User-Centric Identity Metasystem as a library reference to this blog.