Message sent by Dean Woodbeck to the InCommon Participants list on March 24, 2021
InCommon has scheduled a second open office hour with representatives from InCommon and the National Institutes of Health to discuss the coming changes to the NIH electronic Research Administration (eRA) modules. The office hour will take place Thursday, April 1, at 4 pm ET, 3 pm CT, 2 pm MT, 1 pm PT (Zoom link: https://internet2.zoom.us/j/96615320068).
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced new identity management requirements that could affect access for faculty, researchers, and scientists. As of September 15, 2021, NIH will require multi-factor authentication (MFA) for the eRA modules and we expect other NIH applications (and possibly those of other agencies) to follow suit in the months to come. I encourage you to review our Get NIH-Ready wiki page for background and details.
NIH already requires the release of attributes that are part of the REFEDS Research & Scholarship category. You will find details about supporting R&S on our wiki.
We also recommend enabling MFA for faculty and research staff and using the international standard (REFEDS MFA Profile) to communicate such use via your federated login system. Here are suggested configurations for several federation technologies.
Taking these actions will allow your faculty and researchers to use their campus/organization credentials to access eRA and other NIH services, rather than needing to set up an account through login.gov.
If you have questions, please plan to attend the open office hour. In addition, the April IAM Onlinewill feature representatives from NIH as well as a report from the Assured Access Working Group. The working group is developing guidance to help academic institutions implement the REFEDS Assurance Framework, which includes identity-proofing and authentication credential assurance practices and will be supported by NIH.
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Dean Woodbeck
Director of Community Awareness
Internet2 Trust and Identity