During the November 4 technical committee teleconference there was much discussion about the various flows a student may take to register through the system. Basically, the discussion broke into two general categories which need to be described.
In this flow, the first place a student goes will be the system's home page. The student will be shown the logos for all the various participants in the system, and will learn how a single system account will Federate their identity and provide single sign on to some or all of each participant's offerings. The student will create a system account at that time, and will be given the option to create identities with each participant.
Participants will only use the system credentials for authentication, and will only keep enriched participant-relevant data locally. The system will provide an identifier that is unique to the student that links all the accounts together.
This integration strategy reflects both some participant's desires to have local participant credentials and the reality that there may be a migration strategy required for participants who will eventually use Integration Strategy 1. There are 4 different flows through this strategy that are described in further detail.
When a student logs in to a service provider using their system credentials, they are initially directed to the system to perform authn duties. The system will verify the user's identity and return their unique identifier. The service provider will then take the unique identifier to the local identity provider, where additional 'enriched' attributes can be found.
More to follow.