Please use this page to record ideas that you would like to include in the 2025 REFEDS work plan. Copy and paste the template table below. Ideas don't need to be fully formed but the more scope we can get, the easier it will be to assess whether the idea should be taken forward. We look forward to all your ideas!
Template
| Title | <title of your proposal here> |
|---|
| Description | <description text here> |
| Proposer | <your name here> |
| Resource requirements | <money? effort? coordination? unicorns?> |
| +1's | <for others to voice their support - add your name here> |
Ideas
| Title | ROR ID inclusion in entity metadata |
|---|
| Description | Tagging metadata with ROR or other organization identifiers (when available) to make Organization data more specific and manageable. Implementation could be via entity attribute or a schema extension to the Organization fragment in metadata. Consider ways to include other regional or sector-specific organization IDs in addition to ROR. |
| Proposer | Pete Birkinshaw |
| Resource requirements | Working Group logistics support |
| +1's | |
| Title | eduPerson attributes for name pronunciation |
|---|
| Description | Text or URL to audio to help people pronounce the user's name. Similar features are already used in services like Moodle. It's likely to only be of use in local services and R&S style services |
| Proposer | |
| Resource requirements | Schema Board subcommittee |
| +1's | Alan Buxey Gabor Eszes
Niels van Dijk (We even already have the attribute: eduPerson (202208) v4.4.0#audio  |
| Title | Update REFEDS MFA Profile to address phishing-resistant MFA |
|---|
| Description | The US National Science Foundation (NSF) began requiring MFA for its research.gov grant management portal. Research.gov relies on REFEDS MFA Profile. In its announcement, NSF noted that it will further require “phishing-resistant MFA” for those users with sensitive access some in the near future. This signals there is now an need for us to refine the capability to convey degree of authentication assurance, similar to what we do with identity assurance. I’d like to propose a working group to:
- Review the current suite of authentication assurance related profiles (SFA Profile, MFA Profile)
- Consult comparable government guidance documents (e.g., eIDAS, NIST 800-63, etc) in anticipation of mapping needs
- (if possible) reach a consensus across the international R&E community on the definition of “phishing-resistant MFA”
- Update REFEDS’ “authentication assurance” profiles to offer the appropriate levels of authentication assurance definition and signaling mechanism
|
| Proposer | |
| Resource requirements | Working Group logistics support |
| +1's | |
| Title | Adapting InCommon Interoperability Expectations for a global audience |
|---|
| Description | The InCommon Interoperability Expectations Planning Working Group - from the InCommon Trust and Assurance Board (CTAB) aim to extend the Baseline Expectations for Federation participants by identifying new, voluntary expectations for supporting features and practices that enhance interoperability across identity providers and service providers. Additional expectations, while not mandatory, will standardize key configurations and behaviors, reducing the need for custom solutions and fostering efficient, scalable operations. By providing clear technical guidance, this Working Group seeks to streamline federation processes for both federated and bilateral integrations, and to define metrics for assessing compliance and success. - I believe we need to have a REFED WG to adapt/adopt this for the global R&E community to ensure the improvements to interoperability are extended to and realised by all R&E participant |
| Proposer | |
| Resource requirements | Working Group logistics support |
| +1's | Gabor Eszes |
| Title | Adapt the Profiling OpenID Federation for Research and Education for a global audience |
|---|
| Description | The Profiling OpenID Federation for Research and Education (PORE) - formally the Next-Generation Credentials Trust Frameworks Working Group (NGC-TF-WG) - from the Community Architecture Committee for Trust and Identity (CACTI) is looking to define an OpenID profile for Research and Education Federations - we should have a REFEDS WG to adopt or adapt this for the global community - so that this output can be used for global interoperability. |
| Proposer | |
| Resource requirements | Working Group logistics support |
| +1's | Gabor Eszes
Niels van Dijk (SURF) |
| Title | Metadata about Federations Working Group (continued) |
|---|
| Description | To find information about federations today requires that you go to each one of them you're interested to and manually gather the information or go to eduGAIN technical site and look for what is manually registered there. This working group discusses and (may) define a metadata extension that includes information and policy links plus contact information that is published in the federation metadata feed. This will allow others to aggregate this information, for example, in MET and the technical eduGAIN site. The solution should be federation technology agnostic, with examples for both SAML and OpenID technology federations. |
| Proposer | |
| Resource requirements | Working Group logistics support |
| +1's | |
| Title | Verifiable Credentials Schema Subcommittee (continued) |
|---|
| Description | W3C Verifiable Credentials (VC) are increasingly important to our community with the rise of Decentralized Identity and Wallet ecosystems. Several VC-based credential definitions already exist for expressing skills and micro-credentials (e.g., the Openbadges 3.0 specification). However, there is no consistent and community-driven definition for expressing the 'identity related' credentials of the commonly used schema managed by REFEDs like e.g. eduPerson, SCHAC, and voPerson. This subcommittee sets out to define the VC representations of these well-known credentials so they may be used in a standardized and interoperable way. |
| Proposer | Niels van Dijk (SURF), Esther Ruiz Ben (DFN) |
| Resource requirements | Existing, https://wiki.refeds.org/display/STAN/VC+Subcommittee |
| +1's | |
| Title | Entity Selection Profile Working Group (was the SeamlessAccess Trustinfo Metadata Working Group) |
|---|
| Description | To continue the efforts of the 2024 Working Group in developing and specifying a filter mechanism which can select IdP metadata for discovery interfaces, with a focus on the SeamlessAccess discovery service. Additional work for 2025 is to determine composition rules for filters and how to recast the current SAML-based filters suitable for OpenID Federations. |
| Proposer | Alex Stuart and the current WG members |
| Resource requirements | Working Group logistics support |
| +1's | |