Date:
January 8, 2014
Time:
12 Noon Eastern, 9AM Pacific, 5PM UK
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Agenda:
Review of EduGain Policy Framework Constitution
Any other business
Attending:
Warren, Ian, John, Tom, Mark, Paul,
Recording:
Minutes:
- Introduction
- "An Entity is always registered by a Participant Federation" - two meanings. There is no direct registration of entities with eduGAN and a PF is responsible for making sure non-eduGAIN entities are not registered with eduGAIN.
- Terms
- John curious about the fact that the policy framework includes signed declarations of participant federations. Is there a reason?
- Some discussion of MUST, etc.
- Goal of eduGAIN used to be much more ambiguous - this is now a very straightforward position. John notes that there are two values to eduGAIN - trust framework for PFs and also a service to allow interoperation.
- Governance
- John requests clarification of separation between eEC and eSG. Ian explains it as a constituent representation group (eg parlaiment) and an executive group (eg monarch).
- John wonders if "ratify" and "approve" are the same thing? Ian explains that it is more like an international treaty - representatives can agree to or approve of a change but it is only binding after the participants ratify it. Ian explains that there are multiple levels of approval because participants are worried about changes that will exclude participation.
- Warren raises that GEANT Exec is somewhat ambiguous for him, since he is not aware of them. Ian explains that this used to be body composed of NRENs, but it was too "important" to be dealing with something as lightweight as eduGAIN. NRENs have raised that this is something that might need to change to be more inclusive.
- John asks about peering relationships. Ian says there are none at present, but that point 2 in 2.2 is to deal with them if they were to exist. It is conceivable that there might be broader aggregators that want to have a direct peering relationship.
- Warren asks about "non-voting invited observers". Ian says that before they are few, and that before the UK joined they held that status, for instance.
- John asks if approving new memberships or temporary suspensions need EC approval. Apparently not.
- John and Tom worried about circular logic in "active" vs "inactive" voting status. Ian clarifies - if there are many participants in eSG, there is a concern that there can never be an "early" decision when participants simply fail to register a vote. For uncontentious motions, this distinction between active and inactive allows early decisions to be made since it is unnecessary to wait for inactive members to vote.
- Warren asks about a late dissenting vote from an inactive member. Ian clarifies that the chair has a discretion to make decisions about what to do about such a vote.
- John wonders, in respect to the Operations Team (OT), what it does with respect to Registration Practices documents? Ian clarifies that the Federation Operational Practice Statement should better be called an Aggregation Operational Practice Statement, and that it does not actually exist at this point. John would like to have it specify who the officers are, what the checking of participant operational practices are, what happens when there are a duplicate entity descriptors, etc. Ian agrees that this is exactly what is needed. Tom suggests that the word registration should not be part of the title of this document because registration is what end entities do with federations. Ian agrees.
- Warren points out that if there is never a request from SG to have audit that there will presumably never be one.
Next meeting on Jan 22.