The first three architectures in your summary relate to Federating directories using information stored about people in various (trusted) directories - generally to determine if people should be granted access to privileged information / resources. Think username/password. All about adding value to existing commercial/institutional infrastructure - ROI for organisations.

The fourth ‘OpenID’ is an implementation of what some group into the ‘IDENTITY2.0′ category. Accepting or providing information people assert about themselves online, generally to establish who they are and to provide convenient ways to filter access to relatively open information / resources. Think URL and 100 point ‘credit check’.

I’m hoping the projects education.au are involved with will continue to push forward implementations of BOTH types of Identity management. Facilitating federation of organisational /institutional directories in which I have user accounts will reduce the frustration levels when I need to access those trade-secrets safely locked away in internal networks. As the world moves toward more open web based content and connections, logging into my blog first thing each morning should be sufficient for most of the sites I care about to know that I am indeed the fang and really only care about stuff my social networks are talking about.

Fang - Mike Seyfang