InCommon Technical Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Attending: Michael Gettes, Steve Carmody, Ian Young, Jim Jokl, Keith Hazelton, Paul Casney, Tom Barton, Jim Basney, David Walker

With: Dean Woodbeck (scribe), John Krienke, IJ Kim, Tom Scavo, Ann West

Ops Update

Email sent March 12 to site admins and delegated site admins regarding the need to migrate to one of the new metadata aggregates as of March 29. There was a question about whether a participant can elect not to have its delegated admins receive such communications. Tom Scavo will research and report back.

A new secure server (ops.incommon.org) now hosts the metadata signing certificate. The server is TLS enabled, but does not yet have an EV certificate, but working on that. The metadata signing certificate wiki page has been rewritten.

Status Updates

Steering Program Subcommittee Process – The Steering Program Subcommittee has developed a spreadsheet from the strategic priorities paper (discussed on last week’s TAC call) to do three things: 1) identify efforts currently underway and required resources, 2) estinate the level of effort required (high/medium/low), and estimate the resources required for new efforts.

Middleware Website – Steve Carmody has deployed the old middleware website (text only) on a server at Brown that is using Grouper to manage access. TAC members will receive access instructions once the infrastructure is ready.

Document Vetting Process

There was discussion about creating a repository for documents to be vetted, as well as those already vetted. (AI) Steve Carmody will look for a document to be vetted using this new process. After TAC has experience with this process, we will recommend to Steering that this become an InCommon process for use by TAC, Steering, and the AAC.

There was also discussion about a lightweight process to use for documents that don’t rise to the same level of importance. Tom Scavo had proposed such a process in January; TAC will use that to vet the new Software Guidelines wiki page (https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/inctac/Software+Guidelines). (AI) Dean will copy that page to a public location and remove the comments. TAC will then make an announcement that opens a four-week comment period.

Simplifying the Process for Federating

An “Alternative IdP Working Group” was proposed to explore methods for campuses to use to instantiate a SAML IdP and join the InCommon Federation. This working group might look at the goals for InCommon (such as increasing the flow of attributes through the federation and increasing the number of participating campuses), look at methods used by European federations, and look at constructs like the social-to-SAML gateway. TAC will also ensure that this project aligns with the work of the Steering program subcommittee. (AI) Steve Carmody will update the proposed charter for the group and email TAC when it is ready.

Next Meeting

Wednesday, March 27
1 pm ET | Noon CT | 11 am MT | 10 am PT