The Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is being developed by the OASIS XML-Based Security Services Technical Committee (SSTC). The Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is « an XML-based framework for exchanging security information. This security information is expressed in the form of assertions about subjects, where a subject is an entity (either human or computer) that has an identity in some security domain.
http://xml.coverpages.org/saml.html