Siemens of Germany has been involved in identity issues for longer than most current identity management companies have been in business. It goes back to the early days of x.500, yet I frequently forget to mention Siemens when talking about identity management issues for much the same reason I used to overlook RSA - I think of it in non-ID management terms. Siemens makes a full range of consumer products (phones, appliances, computers, hearing aids, televisions, radios and more) as well as power generators, measuring devices and even locomotive engines!

So I wasn't surprised when Bernd Hohgräfe director of Siemens' Director Center of Competence for Identity and Access Management, took me to task for being "a bit biased towards U.S. companies." While I don't think I have any prejudice against European identity organizations (companies from France, Norway, the U.K., Spain, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands have been mentioned in this newsletter), it may appear that I do favor North American organizations. Mea culpa. I will try to stay abreast of European happenings more in the future, but I'll need your help, dear reader. Please drop me a note from time to time to tell me what's going on in European identity management, or to point me toward a development I should be paying attention to.

One such development is the Modinis-IDM project. As the press release states: "The European Commission, DG Information Society and Media, has contracted K.U. Leuven Research & Development (BE), Lawfort (BE), and the Secure Information Technology Center - Austria (AU) to carry out a study on Identity Management in eGovernment under its MODINIS programme. The study aims to build on expertise and existing initiatives in the EU Member States to progress towards a coherent approach in electronic identity management in eGovernment in the European Union."

As a first step toward developing a "coherent approach," the group has released a "Common Terminological Framework for Interoperable Electronic Identity Management," that is to say, a lexicon defining identity topics. Read this, then compare and contrast with another lexicon being put together by The Identity Gang, a largely North American group (with some significant British input).

Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.