Who makes the decisions at DIF? It could be you! — Part 1

Elections for the DIF Steering Committee are coming up in November, as they do every year. In this blog, we’ll tell you all about the Steering Committee, who can run for election, who gets to vote, and how you (yes, you) can get involved.

TLDR:

• Time commitment = 1-5 hours/ month. (Less than 1 hour/week)
• Seats open this cycle = 6 (3 end of term, 3 left during this year)
• Why? = Fun, faster approval of your WG specs, deciding on DIF’s strategic direction, insider information, budget influence and approval, fancy title on your CV, bossing Grace around
• Money = This is a volunteer position, no money is involved
• Any member can run for SC
• Only Associate members can vote so now’s the time to upgrade your membership

How much time do I need to commit?

Firstly, what’s the commitment if you are elected to the Steering Committee? There is one meeting once a month for one hour. Prep for SC meetings can be from 30 minutes to 3 hours per month, depending on what’s on the agenda. For example, on the month when DIF approved the KYA-OS Spec 1.2 or the CAWG Spec 1.2, several members read the specifications thoroughly. This month, we reviewed the annual budget and the Universal Resolver, so that was more like 30-90 minutes of work to prepare for the meeting. So have no fear: The real commitment is typically less than 3 hours per month for most SC members.

Who is on the Steering Committee? Who is eligible to run?

The Steering Committee's current members are always listed on DIF’s Governance page. Elections are set up to create a board of 11 members, which is the maximum allowed (a smaller SC is permissible under the charter). The chairperson of the Technical Steering Committee also is a voting member of the Steering Committee. Over the course of 2026, three board members stepped out for various professional reasons. This year is the end of term for three others (who we hope will run for another term), so there are 5 open seats. 

Any DIF Associate or Contributing member can run for a seat on the Steering Committee. Furthermore, DIF even has a preferential policy to hold four seats for non-enterprise representation to keep the Steering Committee aligned with the makeup of the membership where possible.

Only one candidate per company can run. Several members of the same working group can be candidates, but only one person per member organization.

Reasons to join the SC

The reasons for being on the SC vary, but the first one is fun. You already know that DIF is the most fun place to develop technical standards, and being on the SC gives you an insider glance at how it all happens. Another fun activity is giving Grace a hard time and bossing her around. This year about 20% of her ideas were rejected, and SC members had a great time giving her a fine taste of reality and prior art. Functionally, the Executive Director works for the SC, which means SC members determine DIF’s priorities.

Which brings me to the main reasons that people officially join DIF. One is to set out DIF’s strategy and the other one is to ensure the approval of their Working Group items. For any specification or protocol to have the DIF stamp of approval, it must pass the Steering Committee by full consensus. (On extremely rare occasions by supermajority.) 

This year, we noted that quite a few of the most active Working Groups had the least representation on the Steering Committee. This creates an imbalance, because the SC may be making decisions on behalf of your WG without a voting representative on the board. The most blatant example is TAAWG. Juan attends every SC meeting as DIF’s technical lead, and as the TAAWG co-chair, he was able to present on behalf of the working group. But he doesn’t have a vote. That isn’t ideal for the working group or for DIF in general. We strongly encourage the most active WGs to represent themselves on the SC. . 

One more cool fun fact is that being on SC is similar to being on a board in terms of the fancy title to put on your LinkedIn profile. 

Voting: Not everyone votes

Only paying Associate members can vote, and there is one vote per Associate member.

• If you are a Contributing member, we’d love for you to upgrade your membership. Paying members cover DIF’s operating costs. Now is the time to show your love of DIF. 
• If you are an Associate Member, you will get one vote for your company, so if multiple people are contributing, you’ll have to make the decision internally on who will do the actual voting.
• All votes will be completely confidential. The DIF operational team will know who did and didn’t vote (so we can bug you with a reminder), but we will not have any way of knowing whom you voted for. 

Questions and discussions: swaying the vote

Anyone can submit questions to the candidates and discuss people’s candidacy. DIF will not officially announce candidates until the voting opens on November 17. At that time, DIF will post all of the candidates and their answers to the questions that you ask.

Candidates are allowed to announce their nominations whenever they like. DIF will open a listserv and possibly a Slack channel for discussions and informal Q&A. The DIF staff will take official questions at elections at identity dot foundation and select the best questions to ask all candidates.

Timeline: When is it happening?

Nominations for Steering Committee candidates will open on October 5. On that day, we’ll publish all of the specifics on how to nominate yourself or others. (We know it’s a Sunday. The count was designed so we would finish the election period before Thanksgiving, and nomination starts 44 days before elections.) 

Full timeline: 

• October 5: SC nominations open. Additionally, channels open for submitting questions to candidates and discussing the elections.
• November 3: Last day to submit official questions to candidates.
• November 7: Nominations for candidates close.
• November 17: Elections begin. We will close down all discussion channels at this time. 
• November 24: Elections close. DIF staff will announce the winners the following day. 
• December 1: Official start of the new SC.

Communication: tell us if it’s too much

DIF has adopted a formal CRM system over the past 6 months to improve our institutional memory and our relationships with our active members.

The CRM deployment means you’ll be getting emails that look more professional than in prior years… but… 

If any of that feels too slick or off-brand, please tell us. This blog was 100% human-written, but not all DIF staff are native English speakers, so we do use AI for some of our mailers and social media posts. Likewise, if the cadence of the emails feels pushy, annoying, or off-brand, speak up. We’re trying to weave in professional automation for efficiency and cost reduction, but we don’t want it to end up feeling cheesy, slimy, or slick. 

Oddities

On rare occasions, there may be a re-ordering of the winners of the SC seats to align with the DIF Governance Addendum, which is designed to balance the SC among large, medium, and small member organizations. 

DIF staff curates all DIF channels and may step in if there appears to be inappropriate behavior or code of conduct violations. We don’t expect that to be the case, but in the age of Agentic AI, anything could happen.