Summary: Participants from a number of organizations have been collaborating on creating a coherent set of open-source Identity and Access Management (IAM) software packages to meet the needs of Higher Education and Research. The activity arose in response to concerns raised by many institutions that current products, both open-source and commercial, are not meeting their IAM needs effectively and affordably. A recent workshop resulted in a clearer understanding of the current state of affairs and commitments from all participants to work intensively to develop proposals for well-defined, fundable projects and collaboration vehicles. Next-phase reports are due by mid-September 2011. For now the activity remains invitation-only.
The story so far
If you've followed the research and higher-education (R&HE) IT scene in recent years you know that there is a lot of concern about the state of institutional Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems. IAM services are increasingly recognized as key to institutional security and efficiency, but building comprehensive systems from either commercial or open-source offerings is complicated and expensive. Many new requirements are creating pressure on currently deployed systems:
- new populations, new institutional relationships
- more applications requiring enterprise access management, with greater risks
- outsourcing, cloud services integration
- federated authentication, social identities, support for multi-institutional research collaborations
- assurance, identity lifecycle management, compliance, access certification
- enterprise-scale IAM enablement: service orientation, workflow, event-driven, notification, reporting, user self-service, etc.
- and many more ...
Many open-source software packages are widely used, but generally these are just parts of the overall system: CAS, Shibboleth, simpleSAMLphp, Grouper, Kerberos, OpenLDAP, etc. Other packages are promising but not yet ready: OpenRegistry is one example. Kuali Identity Management (KIM) covers many aspects of the IAM space but most of its services are not yet ready to extend beyond the needs of Kuali applications.
Commercial products are widely deployed in R&HE, but some popular ones have changed their spots recently, making many sites unhappy. These products are usually expensive, and are often monolithic, hard to integrate with homegrown or open-source components.
Conversations among R&HE IAM managers and architects in many venues have made it clear that lots of institutions need to take action soon, and that their requirements are very similar. At the same time, in the Kuali Rice project drivers have been identified from both new Kuali applications and those deploying Rice as institutional infrastructure to scale up KIM to meet enterprise IAM needs. These threads of interest came together at the joint Jasig / InCommon ACAMP meetings in Denver in May 2011, where a core group met to think big about how to address these issues. There was agreement that there is a real opportunity here; there is a lot of work to do and problems to overcome; and success is most likely if the resources of a number of organizations can be harnessed.
A workshop was organized in Chicago August 9-10 2011 to bring together more key players to further explore the problem space and build consensus on a path forward. 15 people attended, representing the Kuali Foundation, Internet2/InCommon, Jasig, and several universities.
This group first divided the IAM space into functional areas, identifying gaps and overlaps in the current HE open-source product scene. It then zeroed in on three key elements – identity registries, provisioning, and access management. Subgroups were chartered to dive deeply into the requirements in each of these areas, to create recommendations to align current efforts and propose initiatives to fill existing gaps. A fourth subgroup was chartered with developing the organizational and branding structure for the initiative. Charged to report back by mid-September, these subgroups will create well-defined proposals to submit to constituent organizations and universities for resourcing.
Currently this activity is invitation-only while in the planning stage. We're hopeful that the projects will move forward and that a large community will want to participate. We'll do our best to keep everyone informed as events happen.
For more information contact osidm4he-info@internet2.edu
Participants
The following people attended the August workshop and are participating in the followup work.
- Tom Barton - University of Chicago / Internet2
- Eric Westfall - Indiana University / Kuali Rice
- Benn Oshrin - Internet2 / UC Berkeley / Jasig
- RL "Bob" Morgan - University of Washington / Internet2
- Chris Hyzer - University of Pennsylvania / Internet2
- Tom Zeller - Unicon / Internet2
- Renee Shuey - Penn State University
- Scott Gibson - University of Maryland / Kuali Rice
- Norm Wright - USC / Kuali Student
- Aaron Neal - Indiana University / Kuali KPME
- Jacob Farmer - Indiana University
- Rob Carter - Duke University
- Keith Hazelton - University of Wisconsin / Internet2
- Jimmy Vuccolo - Penn State University
- Hampton Sublett - University of California, Davis / Kuali Rice
Frequently anticipated questions
Q: Why is the project invitation only? When will my input be welcome, and will it be too late to make a difference?
A: We're keeping the number of participants small enough to have the type of extremely direct and frank discussion and analysis needed to make some tough decisions rather quickly. The reception of our proposals later this year will determine the shape of any new activities, and these will involve broad participation.
Q: Is this initiative trying to start a new open-source organization, and/or a new "brand", to compete with one or more of Kuali, Jasig, SAKAI, Internet2, InCommon, etc?
A: Regarding the brand: if there is to be a coordinated open-source IAM suite, it will need a label of some kind to identify it distinct from its component parts (and it won't be "OSIdM4HE"). Whether that is a new brand or an extension of an existing one is to be determined. Regarding the organization: at this time we are focusing on a vehicle for coordination among existing projects and organizations to ensure they can work together, not creating a new organization. The message is clear from the R&HE community that people would like to see existing development organizations work together better rather than make new ones.