Higgins is a framework that enables users and applications to integrate identity, profile, and relationship information across multiple data sources and protocols. End-users can experience Higgins through the UI metaphor of Information Cards.

Information Cards (aka InfoCards or I-Cards) put you in control of your personal data. Each card represents a slice of the digital you (or a friend of yours) held in some data silo. Any kind of information: your preferences, favorite songs, employee id numbers, drivers licenses, affiliations, your health plan id, ...you get the idea, can be accessed using a card.

How to use l-Cards

• You get cards from web sites. Or you can create your own.
• You install a wallet-like software app called a selector that lets you see and manage them.
• By clicking on a card you can log into sites. No more passwords.

• By clicking on a card you express yourself. No more filling informs.
• You can share cards with friends and businesses you trust.
• Some cards create permanent connections to your friends, communities and businesses.

Tip of the Iceberg

Cards, wallets and so on are really just the tip of the iceberg. Below the user-experience/metaphor layer, Higgins is a pluggable identity framework that can be used to provide identity-related services to a wide variety of applications. The Higgins platform- and protocol-agnostic identity management framework frees the application developer from learning the details of identity technologies, protocols and toolkits. Developers can use Higgins to build "identity provider" web services (e.g. a Token Service) as well as to enable relying websites and applications to accept identity assertions from identity providers. Developers can also extend Higgins to handle new data sources, new token types and new network protocols by developing plugins to the framework itself.

To demonstrate the power of the Higgins identity framework, the project includes several complete, deployable "solutions". See Solutions page.