Attending: John O’Keefe, Dennis Cromwell, Klara Jelinkova, Chris Holmes, Steve Carmody, Pankaj Shah, Sean Reynolds, Susan Kelley, Michele Norin, Mark Crase, Jacob Farmer
With: Ann West, Mark Johnson (MCNC), Shel Waggener
Moved and seconded to approve the minutes from January 5, 2015. Passed unanimously.
Moved and seconded to approve the minutes from February 2, 2015. Passed unanimously.
Klara provided background on Steering’s use of subcommittees last year to address the need to set priorities (Program Subcommittee) and outreach and changes to the governance documents (External Relations and Governance Subcommittee, or ERG).
There was discussion about whether to continue with these two subcommitees. John O’Keefe, co-chair of the Program Subcommittee in 2014, said he felt the subcommittee was necessary, but that at times it delved a little too deeply into operations. He recommended that the Programs Subcommittee continue in 2015, and focus on strategy, incorporating priorities from TAC, the AAC, and staff recommendations. Ann has been working on defining major themes for 2015 and early 2016, based on the subcommittee’s work from 2014. She anticipates having a draft for the subcommittee to consider on March 9.
Steering members Susan Kelley, Mark Crase, Michael Gettes, and Sean Reynolds were assigned to the Program Subcommittee. The subcommittee will also include Steve Carmody (chair of TAC), Jacob Farmer (chair of AAC) and Donna Tatro (community member carrying over from 2014).
The ERG Subcommitee focused mainly on the necessary changes to the LLC document and the Steering bylaws. There was consensus that ERG should also continue, given the need for outreach to CIOs on a number of issues, the attribute release policy now under development, and issues that may need to be addressed as we adopt eduGAIN.
Formal appointments to the ERG Subcommittee will be made at the April Steering meeting. In the meantime, members from last year will address issues/proposals from staff and the community. They are Klara Jelinkova, John O’Keefe, Chris Holmes, and Dennis Cromwell.
IDESG was created as part of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) created by President Obama in 2011 (www.idecosystem.org). It is a private-public partnership to develop an identity ecosystem framework. Jack Suess has been serving as the representative from research and education. The 2015 election will take place March 18-24. Jack has agreed to stand for election and InCommon will encourage its participants to join the IDESG and vote for Jack. https://www.idecosystem.org/content/2015-idesg-election-schedule
In the fall, Steering will discuss IDESG representation for 2016.
Ann and Steve Carmody are developing a policy to recommend to Steering concerning attribute release. They are considering two approaches. One would have InCommon recommend and actively work to have all identity providers release a small set of attributes to all service providers, with the objective of streamlining user access. The other approach is to redouble efforts on Research & Scholarship Category adoption by IdPs. The proposal will be ready for the April Steering meeting.
In addition, Von Welch has identified a number of colleges and universities that are key for R&S adoption. Ann and Von will be discussing a plan for approaching these partners.
Ann provided an overview of the work done by InCommon and MCNC during the past year to develop a partnership aimed at making it more streamlined and more affordable for K12 and community colleges to join InCommon. She brought a proposal that Steering approve a new category of participant, Support Consortium. This would add to the current three types of participants (higher education, research organization and sponsored partner).
Mark Johnson, CTO at MCNC, presented the model for a Support Consortium. Under this model, MCNC would take on some of InCommon’s responsibilities, including that of registration authority, metadata review, and support and training for the K12 and community college representatives. InCommon would provide such services as the signed production metadata aggregate, federation service enhancement, technology development, trust model and practice development and promulgation, Tier 2 help desk, and annual training for MCNC staff.
The draft pricing model is not yet final. It takes into the need for InCommon to do a significant amount of training concerning the RA processes and trust chain, and extensive onboarding work with a new support consortium participant. The fee schedule includes:
The proposal is to establish a first-year fee for MCNC of $19,000.
It was moved/seconded/unanimously approved to establish the participant category of Support Consortium
It was moved/seconded/unanimously approved to approve the pilot fee of $19,000 for MCNC for the 2015 calendar year.
There are two new InCommon staff positions posted by Internet2. If Steering members would like to be involved in the hiring process for either, please email Ann West.