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In recent years InCommon has expressed interest in offering stronger and more direct support for the research mission of member campuses and virtual organizations. One of the more concrete ways to back this up with action in the near term would be for InCommon to help bring into existence an IdP of Last Resort that meets the needs of R&S service providers. Therefore, our primary recommendation is that InCommon take steps to help make available a production IdPoLR service. An IdP meeting all these requirements is unlikely to appear through spontaneous generation. On the other hand, InCommon does not necessarily need to operate the IdP in question, it may be enough for InCommon to identify and support the launch of an independent service operator. Any near-term solution should initially offer a basic set of identity provider services. A solution meeting the requirements detailed above would provide that basic set of services The suite of services could be expected to grow over time as needs evolve and resources permit.
It is worth noting that requirement 12, "No commercial interest in the use of user data" does not rule out commercial service providers as IdPs of Last Resort, but it does rule out those who seek to monetize the user data they collect.
In addition to recommending a near-term plan to get an IdPoLR service into production as quickly as possible, the working group recommends beginning work on a longer-term plan to create a level playing field for any potential provider to offer a comparable or better service. The urgency behind the short-term recommendation comes from the research service providers who have a critical unmet need to enable all of their potential users to access their research sites and tools. The long-term value of encouraging the emergence of multiple IdPs that meet this requirement is to mitigate the risk that failure of a single IdP would mean the end of the service as a whole.
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