CACTI notes of Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Attendees: Kevin Hickey, Margaret Cullen, Rob Carter,Gabor Eszes, Gareth Wood, Judith Bush, Les LeCroix, Chris Phillips, Kevin Mackie, Derek Ownens, John Bradley

With: Kevin Morooney, Nicole Roy, Dmitri Zagidulin, Steve Zoppi, Andrew Scott, Sara Jeanes, Ananya Ravipati, Richard Frovarp, Rob Gorrell

Regrets: David Walker 

Pre-Read Materials: 

  1. Final report of the CACTI Next Generation Credentials Working Group

Action Item Review:

 Agenda

  1. Administrivia
    1. Volunteer(s) to scribe:  Judith Bush
    2. Agenda bash
  2. Announcements
    1. Working Group Updates (email only) - Please share via email on the CACTI list ahead of time
      1. CTAB update mentions baseline expectations , no call for action
    2. We have a CACTI working meeting with 20 seats available, at Internet2 Community Exchange, Chicago, Wednesday, March 6th, noon-1:30 p.m. US Central Time
      1. Nicole will cancel this working meeting unless we get at least a couple CACTI attendees registered for CommEx
        1. Margaret will be there
        2. Nicole
        3. Tom Jordan
        4. Gabor
      2. Nicole will keep it on the calendar, and will sync with Margaret re: agenda for the working meeting
  3. Main Business

    1. Follow-up on NGCWG final report revision
      1. AI. Margaret send for consultation
      2. Wiki page for report, cover letter will be there also
    2. Learner credentials and trust model bootstrapping (Dmitri Zagidulin)
      1. US perspective - Learner Credentials – will be presenting at ComEx with Leif & Nichole
      2. Trust and interoperability issues for Learning Credentials similar to federated authentication
      3. What areas potentially overlap between existing InCommon services and next-generation credentials?  
      4. Incommon - curates and develops trust (legal, through contracts) and expresses that trust. Can InCommon play a role in trust in the VC space? - Margaret
      5. Dimitri “We were excited to discover you already host the trusted directory of  keys and credentials” How does any verifier know? What are natural authorities? Can we enable the ecosystem. 
      6. Margaret: not only hosting, but legal and technical verification. Legal verification of verifier identity.  
      7. Dimitri List is hard but doable, but the procedures and policy – even bigger stretch.
      8. Margaret outlines CACTI’s role in the process of bringing on new systems to InCommon: how best can we engage? Can current infrastructure support, or?
      9. DCC (Digital Credentials Consortium) - Current state - rolling out to MIT, Arizona State, McMasters(Canada), CAP de Monterrey (Mexico), __ Japan
        1. Arizona State has a bridge to SAML in active development – AI for Nicole to check on status of bridge (Contractor joined the shib slack channel for support in developing the bridge)
        2. MIT wallet is already available via app store, ASU close
          1. The wallets speak the same standards
        3. Exchange of learner credentials (transcripts, diplomas)  -
      10. Open Wallet foundation (the Learner Credentials Wallet
      11. Follow on activity to NGCWG sponsored by CACTI.  
        1. Describe the details of a potential pilot?
        2. What are the missing technical pieces to the ecosystem?
          1. Authentication to the Issuer
          2. Authentication of entity authorized to edit the Issuer metadata 
            1. Rob C from chat That also touches on the question of how verifiers validate that issuers are authorized to issue particular credentials, I think (eg., can UNC issue a degree in Electrical Engineering?)
            2. Nicole from chat This is why revocation and updates in the VC world are important. A trust registrar needs to be able to modify the VC that is issued to a learner creds issuer about what kinds of degrees/etc it’s authorized to assert at any given time.And previous versions need to be maintained and honored/respected because a person could have a valid degree from a program which used to exist but no longer does.
          3. How to maintain the use of credentials in cases where the Issuer goes EOL?
          4. There is interest in the certification of the organization to issue the credentials as well.  [University accreditation] Layers of verification and issuers. Les notes that there are well established rules of trust for university issuing and penalties for mis-assertion . 
        3. Potential disruptive technology. Transcript exchange (National Student Clearinghouse) (National Student Clearinghouse is also sending reps to the standards groups)
        4. Who pays for the infrastructure? Issuer, Verifier, Registries….,
          1. Costs shift to the issuer and registers.  Verification is free.
          2. Gareth from chat Over here most (actually all I think) of our institutions charge $30 for any student wishing to get access to their digital transcript - it's a one-off cost to the user and they have perpetual access from then on - we use that fee to cover the license fees for the 3rd party service - MyEquals https://www.myequals.ac.nz/
        5. How soon? MIT in app store; AZ being released. This is in progress this year - very imminent in the launch frame. Individual schools - some – are issuing their own wallets, but they all speak the same standards. (re branded)
        6. Margaret from chat I wonder if there is a possibility for CACTI/InCommon to host some sort of convocation or interop for university wallets, as a means to understand what work is going on, and to facilitate open, interoperable standards in this area.
        7. Trust of the technology
          1. Acceptance of previous proofs
          2. Improved privacy and usability

MIT DCC: https://digitalcredentials.mit.edu/ 

  1. Liaisons from CACTI to the following groups needed:
    1. Component Architecture (Margaret)
    2. InCommon Steering (Margaret)
    3. InCommon Technical Advisory Committee (open) – every two weeks, 1 hour, Thursday 1pm ET
      1. John Bradey (TAC)
      2. Judith Bush (possible split of duty) AI: Nicole ask TAC if that is ok? (TAC)
      3. Gabor Eszes (also available) (CTAB OR TAC)
    4. InCommon Community Trust and Assurance Board (open) – every two weeks, 1 hour Tuesday at noon Central
      1. Gabor Eszes
    5. eduroam Advisory Committee (open) 90 minutes once month Friday morning CT
      1. Kevin Hickey
  2. CACTI 2024 work plan
    1. Futures2 report How can CACTI assist with Futures2?
      1. Knowledge and Communication
        1. The community is seeking leadership
      2. Innovation Cycle
        1. A refocusing of existing services
      3. Are there structural changes (CACTI, CTAB, TAC, cross-overs) that make sense?
        1. Is the existing structure from the outside simple to understand?
      4. There is an urgency to address the issues.  Without the urgency outside entities may step in to solve them for us.
      5. There is a large cohort of people ready to receive our highlights of what to pay attention to
      6. What about bottom up stuff? A call? TechEx? What working groups would the community like us to have? – can the community *poll* information from us? 
      7. Prototyping and early validation of ideas needs bottom up participation that is motivated….
      8. There’s work being done in the community – what about collecting and cataloging to connect those community efforts.
      9. It’s been hard post pandemic to get people’s attention. Attention portfolio is a lens, and getting attention for enough time to give the guidance ….  Getting people to stop and reflect is HARD.  So much harder – so to get the bottom up engagement is to make claims (Bold!) we will wake and engage - get attention, FLIRT! 
      10. If we get more communication out there that CREATES the discussion, we can get the engagement. (Can we CACTI approve reports faster and say more? Cadence for something to come out every month?) 
        1. Read the prereads! Be ready! Then we could pick up our cadence.
      11. Yes, and - the relationship with Dimitri is from work Nicole  has done to develop relationships – we need for all of us to develop similar relationships  – working groups
      12. YES WORKING GROUPS – including those OUTSIDE explicit R&E/REFEDS/InCommon working groups. 
      13. Maybe we want to form a long standing working group to participate in a particular wallet project? How much time can we get?
      14. On the other hand… should we bring them into CACTI?
      15. Can we facilitate the interop of the different groups – here specifically wallet?
  1. AI shared spreadsheet for ideas.  Make the Futures2 actionable
    1. Can do?
    2. Can inform?
    3. Can charter?

Next Meeting: Wednesday, February 28, 2024



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