The Liberty Alliance has announced the public release of its Identity Assurance Framework (IAF).

The IAF is designed to simplify and speed the deployment of identity federations by standardising identity assurance levels and the certification process for all identity assurance service providers participating in federated relationships.

Developed by members of the Liberty Alliance Identity Assurance Expert Group representing the financial services, government, healthcare, IT and telecoms sectors, the IAF is designed to meet cross-industry requirements for baseline identity assurance policy standards for all public and private sector federations.

Liberty Alliance said that the IAF will remove the "unnecessary costs and complexities" organisations face when making trust decisions for acceptance of credential-based assertions of identity information within federations, Liberty Alliance explained.

"The IAF provides answers to the tough questions organisations in every sector have about how to best address today's complex digital identity landscape in order to drive new and valuable federated services into global markets," said Jane Hennessy, senior vice president at Wells Fargo Bank and co-chairman of the Liberty Alliance Identity Assurance Expert Group.

"With the release of the initial public draft of the IAF, organisations now have an industry standard for quickly moving wide scale interoperable federations based on identity assurance which enables a foundation of trust."

The Liberty Alliance Identity Assurance Framework (PDF) is now available for public input and review.