Attending:
Bill Yock
Craig Jackson
Theresa Semmens
Ann West
John Krienke
Steve Carmody
Von Welch
Regrets:
Susan Blair
Chris Holmes
Donald Beck
Tracy Mitrano
Warren Anderson
Notes
On our last call, we talked about the Nov 1 deadline of the eduGAIN Policy Working Group and the need to continue. The group agreed to the following:
- Finish off the discussion of the top three issues (opt-in/opt-out, privacy and dispute resolution).
- Write up the summary of our discussions as an Intent document that can be circulated to the community and used to inform the legal discussions.
- Include a charter for a new group to do the legal and communication work.
- Close down this group.
TechEx
Several WG members attended the open BoF at TechEx on Interfederation. In general, attendees were agreeable to the straw man proposal of 2015 as transitional year with full interfed in 2016. The major concerns expressed included having educational materials for CIOs, Registrars, and VPs of Research. R&S was also a key topic and attendees were pleased to hear it was an international standard now. Given this feedback, it was decided the group could move on to the next big topic: We have a plan for opt-in/opt-out.
Dispute Resolution
Ann uploaded slides that contained the key statements from the eduGAIN and InCommon documents:
EduGAINDeclaration
7. The behaviour of any Member of any Participating Federation whose Entity description is published shall continue to be bound only by the rules of that Participating Federation
8. In particular any complaint about a Member shall be made to the operator of its Participating Federation and dealt with between that Member and that operator according to the rules of that Participating Federation and subject only to that Participating Federation’s governing law and jurisdiction.
9. Neither the existence of this declaration, nor the exchange of information enabled by it, shall create any new legal obligations or rights between Members or operators of any federation. Members and operators remain bound only by their own respective laws and jurisdictions.
11. Any disagreement between Participating Federations shall be resolved by discussion between the respective Participating Federations or their successors and assigns.
12. No financial consideration will be expected between the Federation and other Participating Federations as federation operators and any financial consideration between Members or Members and operators is outside the scope of this declaration.
• eduGAINConstitution:
•Resolution of disputes between the Participant Federations is defined in the eduGAINDeclaration.
•Dispute resolution between a Participant Federation and theeduGAINservice, the OT [eduGAINOperational Team] is the first point of contact. If the Participant Federation is not satisfied with the OT and its resolution, a Participant Federation should bring the issue to the attention of the body that nominates the OT, as defined in section 2.3.
•I InCommon’s Dispute Resolution Process
In the event of any dispute or disagreement between two or moreInCommonParticipants("Disputing Participants") arising out of or pertaining to their participation intheFederation, the parties agree to make every reasonable attempt to resolve the disputebetweenor among themselves. In the case that such a dispute cannot be so resolved, theDisputingParticipants may choose to submit the dispute to theInCommonSteeringCommittee. If the dispute is between anInCommonParticipant andInCommonandarisesout of or pertains to the participation in the Federation, or the dispute is between oramongInCommonParticipants and affects the Federation, theInCommonParticipant(s)shallsubmit the dispute to theInCommonSteering Committee following proceduresdefinedin the FOPP. TheInCommonSteering Committee shall resolve the dispute in thebestinterests of the Federation. Participant agrees that all decisions by theInCommonSteeringCommittee concerning disputes betweenInCommonand Participant shall befinal, provided that Participant may terminate its participation in the Federation (persection5b) if it disagrees with a decision of the Steering Committee and shall not beboundby such decision.
• Q Q: Do I have to go through the federation operator if I have an issue with another org? No, only if there’s a problem that’s not resolved by the usual process of one party leveraging the metadata contacts to connect with another.
Q: What history do we have with disputes? There haven’t been any disputes at the federation level i.e. no one has followed the process and submitted an issue to InCommon Steering. In the future, the disputes will more likely be around attribute release. How much would InC be interested in helping from a non-legal standpoint?
An interesting use case came up recently where an SP displayed all the IdPs in their discovery service. This gives an impression from a user point of view that one can access all these service providers. But if there’s no IdP attribute release policy for that SP, the user can’t access the services. This happened in France and the users contacted the federation directly when they couldn't get access. InCommon doesn’t have the resources to do that now. There will be quite a lot of managing expectations that we will need to do. User access issues becomes more complex with interfederation.
InCommon should use interfederation as a way to promulgate best practices---you have to support them to join eduGAIN. Good idea, but it does create barriers. If we are planning to go full interfed in 2016, does that mean all orgs MUST support good practices by then?
If a rogue entity submits eduGAIN metadata, what does InCommon do? We can alert members and have the right to drop anyone from the metadata. eduGAIN is the more appropriate body for dispute resolution. Everyone knows/trusts each other.
Q: What happens when a new federation joins eduGAIN? The orgs application and information is sent out to the participating federation operators and everyone reviews. Comments and concerns are sent to a private list. In the end, there is a vote to accept or deny their application. Good to hear.
Q: It seems like this a space that’s still emerging. How should we proceed? Yes this is new for everyone and it is very likely that things will change as we develop experience. We are not in the position to identify all the edge cases so our message should be “this is evolving; prepare for changes."
Q: So how does this affect InCommon’s process? It has very little effect aside from clearly stating that the current dispute process applies to all entities in InCommon’s metadata, US and Foreign. If you have a problem with an entity that you can’t resolve, contact InCommon Steering.
There are other bodies that could arbitrate, but there doesn’t seem to be a need to have a third party dispute resolution at this point. Could be overkill. EduGAIN is the right spot where this type of structure should be housed. We have to proceed in good faith that if bad things happen, the community will work together to address them.
Until we have a track record, we don’t want this to heavy weight. There’s an Implicit trust and historically low risk; for now it does seem appropriate for where we are in federation. The cases that come before us will help us to shape the policy and process going forward.