InCommon Pilot Call
August 29, 2013
PARTICIPANTS: Steve Olshansky (Internet2), Andy Fleming (KanREN), Bernie A'cs (IlliniCloud/NCSA), Ann West (InCommon), Mark Johnson (MCNC), Scott Isaacson (Educational Service Unit Coordinating Council (NE), Nicki Trinka (Merit), Mark Scheible (MCNC), Guy Jones (MDREN), Jennifer Griffin (The Quilt)
TASKS:
- Steve - Create a Google doc to start the process of gathering questions for the survey.
- Steve - create a sub page in the wiki for each pilot
MEETING NOTES:
1) Roll Call, Agenda Bash, Intellectual Property Rights Policy Reminder
http://www.internet2.edu/membership/ip.html
2) *Brief* updates from each of the 8 pilots
a) MCNC – Steve Thorpe has been working on the IDP. Associated services are being upgraded. This has taken longer that expected. They are scheduling around cycles, in the middle of NCEd Cloud.
b) MdREN – First six schools are getting connected in to Coursera. Two members have contact information up. Will be moving more members onto Shibboleth. Looking forward to procedures and partnerships InCommon has to offer
c) Merit – Had a call with Pilot participants. Spoke about federating with Canvas since they are already an existing SP. They are working to get their community college set up with an IDP. The are scheduling around cycles
d) Illinois – Final steps of contract with Aegis is getting close. Putting forth development plans. Their product seems to align to the vast majority of the K-12 federation. They are discussing development of more features and moving forward. Requirements of offering - there is a single proxy. The templates they are trying to put together are best business practices. The relationship with InBloom is progressing well. ( http://community.illinicloud.org/ ) Discussions are in process. There are several different vendor programs – interested in working as a channel partner with them. Still focused on the district efforts until the model is solid then may expand beyond Illinois.
e) Nebraska – Working on preparing virtual machines. Preparing management interface with LDAP. Laying ground work for building a working group. To build a larger team, need to develop practices. New development -- Department of Education has Data Dashboard and would like to connect to their ID management. Shibboleth training is coming to Omaha in October.
3) Support from InCommon (cont.): what do the pilots need, and how best to provide it?
a) Other federation topics that pilots would like to learn more about
i) A link to the POP webinar will be posted to the archive
ii) Please use the mailing list to discuss requests and topics.
(1) Layered inter-federated configurations
(a) There had been a larger effort - InCommon TAC InterFederation Working Group at an international level. Domestically there was a conversation about InCommon and the States. There were also discussions around InCommon developing a white-label federation offering. MCNC is working on this with InCommon, and there will be a meeting to identify requirements in mid-September. They are going to take one scenario and bring this back to the regionals and pilot groups. At February workshop there have been discussions about having another follow-up works shop at the Next Quilt Winter Meeting. It would be good to get feedback from the pilot groups about attendance. The 5 Pilot groups on the call (NC, MI, NE, IL, MD) all indicated that they would be able to send at least one representative if this meeting happens
4) Goals and Key Performance Indicators. Shel has expressed a desire to better understand the these so he can report to other sr. Management to track the program -- examples might include:
a) ability to lower cost of providing services
b) increasing adoption
c) for product changes, meeting timelines for deliverables
d) # students involved
e) # districts involved
f) user experience improved
g) reduced time to deploy
h) # 3rd party engagements enabled by pilot
i) total
ii) mean per district participating
i) helpdesk password resets
j) (others?)
i) (potential for broader adoption for others ie: someone is doing a pilot related to Common Core. This would be much broader adoption in certain places. Knowing the breadth of interest in the area as a metric. Goal of key performance based on Common Core experience. Expanding the value proposition - what is the potential impact in terms of quantifiable things that can be measured? The number of new service providers the organization is able to provide. Example – what kind of vendors are brought into InCommon as a result of this interaction with the K-12 community?
ii) Consider a survey model (pilot implementation). Most important question would be “how satisfied were you with the pilot program and would you bring in other participants? Consider a “pre” and “post” survey. It would be good to know if this was easier than expected and the benefits exceed the expectation. Encourage pilots to share freely.
iii) Create a few standard questions and allow the pilots to add a few of their own. Their individual perspectives may be different. This should be a collaborative process.
iv) Be careful to know what you are measuring.
v) Pre-pilot survey – situation could be negative – Post-pilot survey would likely be more favorable. It will be important to have open-ended questions. (not needing to remember numerous log-ins and passwords for various services) The user experience is a big part of this. Improper password creation opens the organization up to hacks
k) HelpDesk Password Reset
l) In a pilot it will e difficult to ascertain the metrics prior to the project.
m) Steve - Create a Google doc to start the process of gathering questions for the survey.
i) Please use the mailing list as a venue to discuss
5) Artifacts to be developing in conjunction with the pilots
a) use cases
b) case studies
c) pilot overviews to share with the community
d) others TBD, capturing learnings and guidance
e) Dedicated wiki spaces for each pilot (under https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/InCQuiltFed/Home )
f) The pilots are the early adopters. The information in the wiki is high level at this point. There are items in the readiness assessment that can be captured for public view. A sub page can be set up with child pages. Access can be restricted while documents are being prepared, and then opened up when ready.
g) Steve - create a sub page in the wiki for each pilot
h) Please let Steve know if you need him to send you the link to your readiness assessment.
i) Having presentation at conferences where this wouldn’t necessarily be expected i.e. – K-12 focused conference, state meeting, CoSN, SETDA, NASCIO. This would be key for recruitment and outreach.
6) Next call Thursday 12-September at 4:00 PM EDT
END OF CALL