Guidelines for Trust and Identity Working Group Chairs and Flywheels

Time to spin up a new collaborative working group? First of all, thanks for stepping into this leadership role. The community relies on and appreciates your efforts.

Wondering how the email list, wiki, calendar, agendas and other details will work? Wondering how to get support if you hit some challenges in steering the working group? This page is designed to help.

 

Roles Overview

Working Group Chair: Provides input to the charter for the group, provides overall strategic leadership, guides group toward producing the charter deliverables, manages high level decisions on how the group engages with Internet2 and the community at large, acts as liaison between community and Internet2 leadership. 

Working Group Flywheel: Provides administrative support to Chair, helps manage communication amongst Working Group membership, tracks and ensures follow-up of project deliverables and action items which come out of meetings. Note: not all Working Groups will be assigned a Flywheel. In these cases the duties of the Flywheel will fall to the Chair, with some duties being distributed to members of the Working Group. 

Start-up Steps for a Working Group 

Who does it?Step
Internet2/InCommon Leadership

Develop charge/scope document. Examples:

Internet2/InCommon LeadershipIdentify a chair and (optionally) co-chair for the working group
Internet2/InCommon LeadershipIn the case of a governance or advisory group, there may be an Internet2 flywheel assigned, that is, a designated Internet2 staff member to assist with the group.  See Table of Internet2 Support Levels to Trust and Identity Working Groups.
ChairPublicize call for membership. See Tools for Publicizing Working Groups. See also Procedures for Recruiting New Group Members
ChairConsider the stakeholders who should be represented on the working group and do targeted outreach as appropriate. 
  • International participation
  • large schools, small schools
  • research groups
  • verticals
  • corporate partners
Chair and Flywheel (if available)Email mw-service@internet2.edu to request email list, BlueJeans connection and wiki space:
  • email list (see email list naming guidelines)
  • BlueJeans (video or phone conferencing) coordinates 
    • Note: as of 2016, Internet2 Technical Services Group requests we use BlueJeans instead of Edial when setting up any new calls
    • Note to flywheels: If for any reason you are setting up an Edial call, do not set up an Edial call under your own Edial account. Please request from mw-service to leverage the shared Edial account (i2MI-info@internet2.edu) that will be sustained even if a particular staff member departs.
  • wiki space (here is a note for InCommon staff regarding placement of the working group wikis)
Chair and Flywheel (if available)

Determine the meeting schedule

  • May use a Doodle Poll to determine members’ availability
  • Once you determine the best meeting time, schedule regular meetings and simply cancel if they are not needed.
    It gets complicated to NOT have a regular meeting time and to try to schedule AD HOC meetings.
  • Pick a time that works for both the chair and flywheel to ensure effective communication and support. 
Chair and Flywheel (if available)

Optional: Establish a calendar invite using Outlook 

  • Note: you can put a SYMPA email group address in the "To" line of an Outlook invite.

Notes/Minutes and other Tools


Ongoing Support

Tips/Good Practice for a Successful Working Group

During Calls:

Other:

Process for Vetting Documents (this is being reviewed as of Feb, 2016) 

Closing a Group

When a group finishes its work or gets transitioned/combined for a new phase of work:


See Also:

InCommon Working Group Home

Working Group Agenda template

Tools for Publicizing Working Groups

Internet2 Support Levels to Trust and Identity Working Groups (Google Doc)

Flywheel Specific Info