A persistent data tracking mechanism for user-centric identity governance

Identity governance is an emerging concept for fine-grained conditional disclosure of identity information and enforcement of correspondingdata handling policies. Although numerous technologies underlying identitymanagement have been developed, people still have difficulty obtaining a clearpicture of how their identity information is maintained, used, and propagated. An identity management framework is described for tracking the history ofhow a person’s identity information is handled after it is transferred acrossdomains of control and for enforcing meta-policies related to managing identityinformation distributed over the Internet. With this framework, organizationsthat manage identity information can improve accountability fortheir data practices and thereby increase their trustworthiness. The frameworkalso enables users to control and optimize the propagation of their identityinformation in a user-centric manner