InCommon Technical Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes

April 2, 2015

Attending: Steven Carmody, Ian Young, Nick Roy, Jim Jokl, Tom Barton, Paul Caskey, Scott Cantor, David Walker

With: Tom Scavo, Dean Woodbeck, Ann West, IJ Kim

March 19 minutes approved

New Entities Working Group

Jim Jokl reported on the working group’s draft report:

• sent the participants list an announcement and link to the report’s recommendations 

• will take comments via the participants list and comments on the wiki page

• will follow-up with Keith Hazelton on the request to MACE-DIR for an attribute designating “underage child”

• comment period ends April 10

• much of the supporting documentation behind the recommendations is finished

• David Walker reported that this will be discussed on the Quilt pilot call on APril 9

• TAC will review the report and comments on April 16


(AI) Ann will take this to the eduGAIN Policy Working Group to incorporate relevant portions in their report, including any proposed changes to the FOPP or Participation Agreement, plus campus implications. This working group’s report is expected to be ready for the April 27 Steering meeting at the Global Summit


InCommon 2015 Priorities

Steven submitted TAC’s “vote” on the strawman Priorities 2015 document compiled by the Programs Subcommittee, which will be discussed on the April 6 Steering call.

Below is the priority list, in rank order, after the Programs Subcomittee vote. NOTE: This has not yet been reviewed by Programs or full Steering.

O) Attribute Release
A) idP/SP Practice Requirements
N) International Interfederation (eduGAIN)
Q) Community-facing IdP for Researchers without Federated Credentials
T) Understanding our Community
G) Federation Operational Security and Continuity Projects
L) User Consent
J) Streamlining Admissions to Higher Ed (CommIT Project Roadmap)
D) Community Practice Framework
E) Community MFA Profile
X) Make Federation for IdPs: Review Alternative IdPs Report
U) Revamp InCommon Planning Process
B) Verification of Participants and Corporate Support Partners Adoption of Entry-level Practices
I) Support Consortia Implementation for Community Colleges and K12
H) Certificate Service Projects
M) Federated Incident Response
S) Engage Federal Government on Research and Identity
R) Develop Partnership Strategy with ORCID
V) Future of the Federation
P) InCommon Research Community Webpage
K) InCommon Value Proposition and Community Resources
F) Continue US Government-approved Trust Framework Provider Status
W) Develop MFA Gateway Service for Campuses Service Providers

Attribute Release Resolution

Steven and Ann will have a resolution for Steering to consider for the April 6 meeting. Steering wants to spur adoption for R&S and Von Welch has created a list of key IdPs that still need to support R&S. The resolution will also include a section encouraging IdPs to relax attribute release policies, with recommendations on how to do so on their campuses. This involves other issues (user consent, default attribute release policies, etc)

TAC will be involved in developing the plan to propagate this.

Determining the Future of R&S Categories within InCommon

This is a follow-up to last meeting’s discussion about REFEDS R&S, InCommon R&S, what to do with the two tags, and how to proceed going forward. The end goals are to:

• Provide the capabilities of REFEDS R&S to InCommon.

• Resist breaking any functionality that has been provided by InCommon R&S


The consensus was that:

• All R&S SPs should meet the requirements of the REFEDS R&S Entity Category specification. With the exception of one non-responding SP, this is already the case.
• Retain the legacy incommon.org R&S tag in SP metadata for some unspecified time, so as to not break interoperability between R&S SPs and R&S IdPs.
• Mount a vigorous campaign whose goal is for all new and existing R&S IdPs to support global R&S, that is, to release attributes to all R&S SPs, including R&S SPs in other federations.
• Give new and existing R&S IdPs the option to release attributes to R&S SPs registered by InCommon only. Tag these IdPs with the incommon.org R&S tag.
• Filter the incommon.org R&S tag from metadata exported to eduGAIN. Only the refeds.org R&S tag will be exported to eduGAIN.

(AI) Ann will develop text documenting this consensus and send it to the TAC list.

(AI) Ann will work with the eduGAIN Policy Working Group to include this in their report

(AI) Dean - put out a Doodle on Global Summit attendance

Next Meeting - Thursday, April 16 - 1 pm ET