EAP Membership

Who Should Join?

• Federal Government Agencies
• State Governments
• Private Sector Companies and Organizations
• Trade Associations
• Professional Associations
• Public Interest Groups
• Non-Profit Groups

EAP Goals

The EAP’s goal is to provide a simple, yet reliable, user-friendly process for verifying identity across systems and federations. The EAP is not going to duplicate the work of other organizations in the e-authentication world not does it seek to replace individual industry wide authentication protocols.

Instead, the EAP will build on the groundbreaking work of others by:

• Creating a voluntary partnership for governance of digital authentication among stakeholders from all levels of government, the private sector and public interest groups.
• Eliminating the need for individual parties to have bilateral agreements with other parties upon whose authentication processes they wish to rely. Instead, any party operating under EAP rules agrees to follow those rules, resulting in multilateral trust among all participants.
• Establishing and maintaining common policies and practices for credentials, credential providers and credential processors that will facilitate trust, interoperability, and the easy evaluation and acceptance of credentials issued by other parties.
• Developing an evaluation process for credentials, and setting standard approaches and minimum requirements for identity management.
• Building on and complementing existing credential mechanisms for operating rules and associated processes.
• Working cooperatively with other nations’ identity systems.

EAP Dues Structure

There are two classes of EAP Membership: Full Membership and Associate Membership. All members have rights of full participation in EAP activities. However, only Full Members gain voting rights on EAP issues and rules.

A given member’s membership year begins in the month in which EAP receives a commitment to join.

EAP Membership Benefits

EAP Members have the opportunity to:

• Identify projects to test the EAP trust framework.
• Determine which policies and practices promote the interoperability of electronic identity credentials issued by different federations.
• Help shape identity assurance policy for both the public and private sectors.
• Expand markets by promoting wider use of identity credentials.
• Stay abreast of government policy that will have an impact on identity assurance.
• Learn about the latest technology, standards, and solutions in the e-authentication and identity assurance industry.
• Get to know public and private sector leaders in e-authentication.
• Identify opportunities to save time and resources in implementing identity assurance programs.
• Vote on key aspects of the EAP’s Trust Framework as it is modified in response to pilot tests and other developments.
• Position their organization to participate in pilot programs that will influence the evolution if identity assurance.
• Participate in all EAP membership activities, such as meetings, conference calls, issue resolution, and rules updates.
• Have access to the “Members Only” section of the EAP website, documents, and materials.
• Avoid “re-inventing the wheel” by identifying best practices in the industry.

EAP Membership Application

Click here to download an EAP Membership Application Form.

Questions?

Visit our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) or contact eapartnership@nacha.org