Currently a site may have up to two site administrators who manage metadata via a web interface called the Federation Manager. For sites with only a few entities published in metadata, this maintenance process works reasonably well, but for sites with dozens of entities in metadata, this isn't very practical. In the latter case, the site administrators become a bottleneck that prevents the timely management of metadata.
Delegated administration of metadata addresses this issue. The term delegated administration refers to the ability of a site administrator to securely delegate responsibility for administering metadata to another administrator called a delegated administrator, thereby offloading the administration of metadata to a trusted third party.
Delegated administration of SP metadata has been implemented in the Federation Manager and is being tested as we speak. We anticipate giving a live demo at the Spring 2012 Internet2 Member Meeting. In the meantime, the attached screen shot will give you some idea of how easy it is for a site administrator to create a delegated administrator in the Federation Manager.
We think delegated administration is a potential game changer. Using this new feature, a site can now safely and easily manage large numbers of entities in metadata. Instead of having to create local tools and processes to manage SP metadata, a site can now leverage the Federation Manager directly instead of reinventing the wheel. Delegated administration will accelerate the growth of SP entities in InCommon metadata. We are already seeing this happen. We welcome this growth spurt and are scaling our infrastructure to handle the influx. The delegated administration feature is the first step in that direction.
