InCommon Steering Committee Meeting - May 6, 2019
Attending: Ted Hanss, Brad Christ, Laura Paglione, Janemarie Duh, Marty Ringle, Christine Miki, Melissa Woo, Dee Childs, Dave Vernon, Pankaj Shah, Mike Erickson
With: Chris Phillips, Keith Wessel, Kevin Morooney
Regrets: Sean Reynolds, Von Welch, Chris Sedore, Mary-Catherine Martinez, Ann West
Action Items
(AI) All Steering members review the fee change communication by close of business Wednesday, May 8.
(AI) Kevin Morooney - make changes to the fee change communication as discussed in today's meeting.
Fee Change Resolution
By email vote, the InCommon Steering Committee adopted this resolution:
InCommon Fee Change Resolution
InCommon Steering Resolution on InCommon Fee Change
In May 2018, the InCommon Steering Committee began discussions regarding the future operational and financial sustainability of InCommon. There are many converging dynamics that triggered such a discussion; the successful completion of the TIER program, a change in support for Shibboleth, and the recognition of the intricate and ever increasing connection between the operation of the federation and the software upon which it depends compel the steering committee to position InCommon to both seize opportunities and mitigate risks associated with these dynamics.
After several months of discussion and working with InCommon/Internet2 staff, a potential new InCommon service fee schedule was developed to address these dynamics. The InCommon Steering Committee and senior InCommon/Internet2 staff invited all InCommon Executives and Participants to a January 2019 webinar where the dynamics and the proposed new fee schedule were discussed and feedback, concerns solicited. Open office hours (to which InCommon Executives and Participants were again invited) were conducted weekly for four weeks, to continue to solicit feedback on the proposed new fee schedule. All webinar materials were made available on a web site (https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/x/DQJ0C) and a Frequently Asked Questions document was developed (https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/x/KAJ0C).
The current InCommon fee schedule can be viewed at https://www.incommon.org/fees.html.
The proposed new fee schedule is:
InCommon Fees by Participant Level | ||||
Current Participants | Current Cert-Only | Current Research Org | 2020 Participation Fees** | |
Level 1 | $5,025 | $4,138 | $3,250 | $12,000 |
Level 2 | $4,025 | $3,363 | $2,700 | $9,000 |
Level 3 | $2,575 | $2,088 | $1,600 | $6,000 |
Level 4 | $1,755 | $1,468 | $1,180 | $2,500 |
*Levels are based on Carnegie classifications (higher ed), FTE (research orgs), and annual revenue (sponsored partners). **Note: These fees are for InCommon participation. They do not include the separate fees for the Certificate Service or eduroam. | ||||
Fee Change Communication
Kevin reviewed the fee change communication and anticipates sending to participants and execs at the end of this week. He has vetted the schedule with other areas of Internet2 and there are not conflicts.
(AI) Steering members should provide an comments by the end of the day Wednesday, May 8. There were a number of comments about ensuring the value of the increase for the participants comes through in the letter. (AI) Kevin will revise the document and add 3-4 sentences to ensure this message is clear.
CACTI FIM4R Gap Analysis
Chris Phillips, chair of the Community Architecture Committee for Trust and Identity (CACTI) provided an overview of recommendations based on the FIM4lR report (Federated Identity Management for Research). The FIM4R paper defined areas of improvement for research and education federations to serve research.
CACTI conducted a gap analysis comparing the report’s recommendations with InCommon’s current operations, and focused on developing recommendations vs. enumeration of all of the points in the FIM4R paper.
The priority recommendations are:
- Invest in areas to support Collaboration-as-a-Service
- Support must include both services and underlying infrastructure
- Specifically
- Support CILogon as a critical service.
- Establish TIER packaging default settings and profiles that support easy use of CoManage and CILogon
- Invest in the capacity to deliver production level federation trust in next generation trust protocols, specifically OIDC Federation
- Increase alignment with research needs
- Formalize annual assessment of tools and services
- Creation of "Best Community Practices” and tools to implement them
- Improve channels of communication and advocacy
- Foster partnerships between the researcher community and IAM professionals
- Actively cultivate expertise and in-house knowledge of these solutions and BCPs in the field
- Improve research representation at all levels of Internet2 T&I
- Delivering on the Recommendations
- Identify one time activities to be annualized to reduce effort
- Specifically: CACTI to help facilitate a single Internet2 T&I roadmap by mid-2019.
- Global peers (NRENS, REFEDS)
- US with national platform projects eg: Science Gateways, Globus
- Cloud providers
- Campuses
- Federal funding agencies
- Maintain keen eye on sustainability and supporting behaviors:
- Coordinate to maximize benefits by engaging with:
- Continue to seek more partnerships with:
- Focus on Trust and Identity roadmap for 2019
- Improving sustainment practices
- Assist improving communication between TAC, CTAB, TIER Architects and other partners
- Engage with REFEDS, GÉANT, and other communities
- Already in progress starting with TAC roadmap planning
- Act on recommendations
Deployment profile working group recommendations
Steering heard from Keith Wessel, co-chair of the InCommon Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), who chaired the Deployment Profile Working Group. Keith reviewed the executive summary of the working group’s report and shared the final report. The working group delivered a rewrite of the SAML2 Interoperability Profile (SAML2int), including adding additional identifiers to ease interoperability. TAC has accepted the final report.
Steering voted unanimously to also accept the final report.
Future InCommon Steering Committee meetings
The September meeting will move to September 9 to avoid Labor Day. The Trust and Identity PAG September meeting will move to September 16.
Here is a draft of topics for future meetings
- Training futures (June)
- Next generation Campus Success Program (June)
- Metadata Query transition planning (Fall)
- Branding/marketing updates (June)
- Regular inflationary fee increases (August)
- LLC status (July)
- A look at FM before and after. A look at the whole onboarding, site admin, metadata process (July)