The next presentation of the InCommon Future report will take place Wednesday, April 29, from 3-4 p.m. at the Internet2 Spring Member Meeting. The session will be netcast, allowing participation by InCommon and Internet2 members from around the country.
A slide presentation will outline the key concerns and suggestions of the Future group. The group is now seeking comment from the higher education community and its InCommon federation activity. Your input is needed in order to best express the support and positioning of an identity infrastructure for scholarship, education, and research in the U.S.
The document is intentionally open ended for response on priorities, structures, and recommendations, which will emerge into a final report by end of June.
The April 29 track session will be netcast, with slides provided via web link. Details for the netcast are available at http://events.internet2.edu/2009/spring-mm/agenda.cfm?go=netcast.
Another session will take place via conference call on May 4 (4:00 p.m. EDT), hosted by the InCommon Future group and the InCommon Steering Committee. The one-hour call will include time for Q&A and comment. Details on accessing all of these means to comment and participate are available on the InCommon Future wiki.
Just six months after reaching the milestone of 2 million end users, InCommon today announced that its community now includes more than 3 million end users and 141 organizations.
InCommon is the first nationwide identity and access management federation for higher education. In an identity federation, members agree on a set of shared policies, trust-establishing processes, and technology standards. This greatly streamlines collaboration among multiple organizations.
In one significant highlight, all of the members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation - which includes all of the Big Ten schools and the University of Chicago - are now members of InCommon. The CIC plans extensive use of the federation as its member institutions greatly expand opportunities to collaborate, and develop and share digital resources.
"Colleges and universities, as well as companies and non-profits that provide services to higher education, realize the value of a federation," said Lois Brooks, Director of Academic Computing at Stanford University and chair of the InCommon Steering Committee. "This significantly reduces duplication of effort and allows campuses, both large and small, to have greater control over our users' personal information while providing a relatively simple way to share online materials and critical applications."
Colleges and universities participate in the federation to simplify their processes and make it easier for their students, faculty and staff to use a variety of resources for which the institution has contracted. Through InCommon, individuals can use their university ID and password to log in to such off-campus services as course management systems, library databases, multimedia content, and career center systems and tools.
Because individuals use their campus credentials, the providers of these resources no longer need to maintain individual user accounts, since they can provide protected content to multiple campuses and universities using a shared single sign-on system.
"Exponential growth in mobile computing, social networking, and scholarly collaboration, has created new challenges for universities to develop secure and scalable environments that can effectively allow these collaborations to happen," said Brooks. "InCommon addresses these challenges by partnering with universities and together providing the necessary infrastructure to interconnect these services and resources in ways that encourage the free flow of scholarship."
For more information on InCommon and a full list of participants, visit: http://www.incommon.org
The InCommon Update provides a summary of the work being done by working groups and collaboration groups associated with InCommon. The update, which will be distributed in printed form at the Internet2 Member Meeting, is now available as a PDF on the InCommon Collaborate wiki. Look for the 2009 Spring Member Meeting heading on the "Information From InCommon" page.
This version of the update includes information about a pilot with the NIH testing the new Silver assurance profile, InC-Library's focus on federating library services, the InC-Student efforts with registrar offices and a National Student Clearinghouse pilot, InC-SharePoint's work, information from the TeraGrid, and the spinning up of a US Federations group.
Thanks to everyone involved in these projects and helping to move InCommon forward.
A -draft- report is now available from the InCommon Future group for community response. There will be in-person and teleconference sessions and multiple methods for you to provide input to this important juncture for the higher
education community and its InCommon federation activity. Your input is needed in order to best express the support and positioning of an identity infrastructure for scholarship, education, and research in the U.S.
In a compressed timeframe, the InCommon Future group has provided a significant amount of energy, wisdom, and clarity for this effort. They are also keenly bent on keeping channels of communication open to the broad community they represent. The draft report is now available on the InCommon Collaboration wiki.
The document is intentionally open ended for response on priorities, structures, and recommendations, which will emerge into a final report by end of June (see the Charge on the wiki for further detail).
There are several ways for InCommon participants and Internet2 members to express a voice:
1. April 27th 5:00pmET. The InCommon Forum at the Internet2 Spring Member Meeting. We will host a presentation and round table discussion for /both/ in-person and teleconference participants.
2. April 29th 3:00pmET. A track session on InCommon Future and US Federations at the Internet2 Spring Member Meeting will be netcast, with slides provided via web link.
3. At any time, you may send us your thoughts at a unique email address where we will aggregate comments for the InCommon Future group. That email address is: inc-future-comment@incommonfederation.org
4. May 4th 4:00pmET. Members of both the InCommon Future group and the InCommon Steering Committee will host a 1 hour session for Q&A and Comment.
Details on accessing all of these means to comment and participate are available on the InCommon Future wiki.
Aggregation and leveraging resources is one of the main priorities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, a dynamic consortium of 12 world-class research universities that includes the Big Ten members and the University of Chicago. After the 12 member-institutions invested in building their own high-speed fiber optic network, one of its primary goals was the sharing of online resources. However, with a dozen disparate network systems serving more than half a million collective users, this objective faced considerable barriers. The solution was to leverage the InCommon Federation.
Read the story at the CIC eNews site.