UMA

User-Managed Access (UMA) is a protocol that enables individuals to use a unified control point for authorizing who and what can get access to their online personal data (such as identity attributes), content (such as photos), and services (such as viewing and creating status updates), no matter where these things live on the web. At this control point, a user can set policy that ensures that only requesters meeting criteria such as having a certain identity, being over a certain age, or being willing to agree to non-disclosure terms can succeed in gaining access. UMA can apply to a wide variety of sharing scenarios, such as sharing social data and calendars with friends, sharing health data securely with medical professionals, giving contract bookkeepers access to small-business financial data, and offering photos for sale. An international team of computer industry professionals, web service providers, and researchers has been involved in designing and implementing the draft UMA specifications.

• Web protocol specification drafted, with initial version and updates submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for consideration
• Four known implementations, with interoperability testing scheduled to begin shortly and with Java and Python implementations to be open-sourced shortly
• Interest expressed by several organizations in deploying UMA to solve a variety of selective-sharing scenarios

(as of Feb. 2012)