Please use this page to record ideas that you would like to include in the 2015 workplan. Copy and paste the 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 idea should be taken forward. We look forward to all your ideas!
**updated 17th December 2014** Many thanks for all of the inputs - this will now be combined with ongoing work items and discussed by the REFEDS SC. A formal word document will be shared in January 2015.
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Template
Title | <title of your proposal here> |
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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
Group 1: Global services: incident response, helpdesk and central monitoring tools
Title | Fed Ops Security Incident Response |
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Description | Most federations have wording in their federation policy to support incident response but this tends to be a few words committing the Op, IdP and SP to work together on issues. There is no developed idea of the workflow for incident reporting and it is difficult for SPs to understand the process across different federations or contact multiple federations. REFEDS should define a common process and workflow descriptions for federations and support a lightweight model for supporting incident reporting and discussion - possibly via the FOG list or an XMPP type approach. As discussed at ACAMP. |
Proposer | Nicole on behalf of ACAMP session. |
Resource requirements | REFEDS Coordinator time, buy in from federations, possibly some small infrastructure support requirements. |
+1's | Tom Barton, Wendy Petersen (CAF), Dave Kelsey, Scott Koranda, Romain Wartel, Michal Prochazka, Ann West, Heather Flanagan, Lukas Hämmerle, Jean-François Guezou |
Consensus | Proceed - keep lightweight. |
Title | Global FedLab |
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Description | Lots of useful tools have been produced as part of FedLab - as seen in Roland's excellent presentation in Indianapolis. There have also been other tools developed across the community to monitor and check information - such as MET, Code of Conduct monitor, Lukas's domain-checking tool for edugain, SMEV etc. etc. Some of FedLab will be moved to production as part of the GN4 project under the Identity and Harmonisation Task, but this will only address specific GEANT Project use cases. A pilot should be undertaken by REFEDS to look at global requirements and the best set of tools for our community. In the longterm this may merge back with GEANT service offerings but it makes sense to run a pilot under REFEDS to address all possible features. |
Proposer | Licia Florio, Nicole Harris, Roland Hedberg |
Resource requirements | Funding for hosting and coordinating testing and decisions around useful tools. Development effort can be provided via GN4. |
+1's | Tom Barton |
Consensus | Proceed |
Title | EduGAIN Global incident handling/support framework |
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Description | As national federations continue to join eduGAIN the problem of supporting users across federation boundaries will increase. When a user has an issue attempting to access services provided in another federation how it will be resolved in this global federation of federations. Issues the end user may experience include;
The development of a global incident handling/support framework. This framework would build on each federation’s user support strategies and seek ongoing support of the framework from federation through a memorandum of understanding. |
Proposer | Terry Smith (AAF) and Sat Mandri (Tuakiri) |
Resource requirements | 1) Development of a service oriented approach eduGAIN Global Support Framework to provide seamless user experience, including: i. Capability to log support request from anywhere (eduGAIN Support Zendesk) ii. Incident Management process for National Federation on eduGAIN iii. Incident Management process for Service Providers (Institutional, National, and International SPs) 2) A program of work to ingest (1) above into all national federations participating in eduGAIN. Development and documentation of the framework Marketing of the framework and buy in for federations |
Risk and Issues | eduGAIN to publish a register for participating members to log and manage Risk and Issues |
+1's | Heath Marks (AAF), Wendy Petersen (CAF) |
Consensus | This is an edugain operational issue and some of the info is being looked at - e.g. helpdesk functionality in GN4. Not for REFEDS. |
Title | Federated Error Handling |
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Description | Develop a systematic approach to error handling at the Service Provider, especially in the common case where there are no (or too few) user attributes in the SAML response. One approach that has been suggested (but is by no means the only approach) is to leverage the Error Handling URL (errorURL ) in IdP metadata so that end users are directed to an appropriate service point (e.g., help desk, IdM support, etc.). A possible outcome of this work item might be a simple profile of the errorURL in IdP metadata and a strategy for increasing its usage worldwide. |
Proposer | Tom Scavo |
Resource requirements | Profiling the use of errorURL in IdP metadata (if that is indeed a recommended approach) would be relatively easy |
+1's | Scott Cantor, Niels van Dijk (SURFnet), Jean-François Guezou, Pieter van der Meulen |
Consensus | Proceed with scoping |
Group 2: Virtual Organisations and Groups
Title | VO Assessment |
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Description | Several years ago, the COmanage project put together a questionnaire aimed at helping both the VO and the organizations supporting them understand their IdM needs and business processes. This proved to be fairly useful, but it needs to be updated and expanded to help a more international audience. The old assessment is available off the COmanage wiki, hosted by Internet2. |
Proposer | Heather Flanagan |
Resource requirements | Some effort (probably not a huge amount), maybe Minimal effort, support for a survey, and kittens |
+1's | Niels van Dijk (SURFnet / GEANT SA5 VOpaas), Michal Prochazka, Slavek Licehammer (CESNET) |
Consensus | Proceed |
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Title | Focus on VOs |
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Description | VOs straddle national Feds and we handle them in an ad hoc (at best!) fashion. What practices should the interfed community adopt to support their Fed/Interfed needs? Deliverables might include strawman recommended practices to national Feds and roles & responsibilities that together would define a consistent service presented to VOs. The purpose would be to inform ourselves of what it might actually take to operationalize such a service. Could build on the VO Assessment activity proposed by Heather above. |
Proposer | Tom Barton |
Resource requirements | A few working group members to interview principals from several VOs or other organizations that support them or otherwise are knowledgeable about needs from a VO perspective (eg, Center for Trustworthy Scientific Cyberinfrastructure). A few Fed Ops to mull this over from an operational perspective. Someone to edit a resulting doc. |
+1's | Romain Wartel, Michal Prochazka, Scott Koranda, Wendy Petersen (CAF), Niels (both with SURFnet as well as GEANT SA5 VOpaas hat on)van Dijk, Heather Flanagan, Maarten Kremers (SURFnet / Geant JRA3) |
Consensus | Merge with assessment activity and work with GEANT Project. |
Title | Attribute authorities and group membership/role information |
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Description | Attribute authorities become interesting in VO world, where IdPs are not able to satisfy SP needs on additional attributes about the users especially group membership/roles. The main problem is when one SP wants to accept users from different VOs which use different attribute authorities. There is no common standard for representing group name/role in the attribute having VOs identification into account (just group name can lead to collision among different VOs). Some examples how group names are used by current group mgmt systems:
Protocols which work with groups and theirs requirements on the group name:
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Proposer | Michal Prochazka (CESNET) |
Resource requirements | Several conference calls should be enough for setting up the working group and produce recommendation on nameing schema for groups including VO identification. |
+1's | Scott Koranda, Wendy Petersen (CAF), Niels van Dijk (SURFnet), Heather Flanagan, Tom Barton, Slavek Licehammer (CESNET), Maarten Kremers (SURFnet / Geant JRA3) |
Consensus | Move to working group |
Group 3: Federation Operator Best Practices
Title | eduGAIN Recommended Practices |
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Description | With edugain gaining steam, national Feds are trying different approaches to managing import, export, and filtering. This activity would review an early harvest of national Fed experiences and produce recommended practices that national Feds can use to produce a more consistent experience for IdPs and SPs, and hence for users. |
Proposer | Tom Barton |
Resource requirements | Perhaps 6 conference calls for a working group to organize, gather materials, net out essential recommendations. Someone to edit a resulting doc. Email list support. |
+1's | Mikael Linden, Jean-François Guezou, Ann West, Heather Flanagan, Maarten Kremers |
Consensus | Continuation of FOP work - frame as such. Focus on publication requirements. |
Title | Focus on R&S adoption |
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Description | What is needed to jump start R&S programs in more national Feds? Produce recommendations, possibly including training, template processes and communication materials, live exchanges between Feds with established practices and others getting ready to dig into it. |
Proposer | Ann West (communicated by Tom Barton, as version history will attest) |
Resource requirements | Working Group with representation from a couple of national Feds already doing R&S with a couple not quite there yet. Maybe 6 conference calls and list support. Could lead to a further event programming activity. |
+1's | Scott Koranda, Wendy Petersen (CAF), Ann West , Andrew Cormack, Maarten Kremers |
Consensus | Frame as continuing work on Entity Categories. Develop easy to consume legal opinion / cookbook. How do we assess success or failure? Tools for monitoring (see FedLab). |
Title | Contacts in Metadata |
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Description | As interfederation increases in scope, so does the importance of contact information in metadata. The goal of this work group is to clarify and perhaps profile the use of contacts in metadata. Possible work items include:
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Proposer | Tom Scavo |
Resource requirements | Federations have a long history of the use of contact information in metadata and so widespread agreement may be difficult to achieve but presumably the results of this working group will make it easier for entities to interfederate |
+1's | Scott Cantor |
Consensus | Lightweight review / survey of existing practice and report back for now. |
Group 4: Alternative Methods of Metadata Distribution and Discovery
Title | Federation at scale |
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Description | Determine next steps towards dynamic resolution of entity metadata. The assumption is that this is how metadata will eventually be obtained at transaction time. This activity might focus on furthering the development and experimentation with protocols and implementations for so doing, or on how metadata comes to be sourced for dynamic resolution, or on identifying criteria by which to assess that a given dynamic resolution mechanism is working well. The purpose is to gain further experience and not necessarily to attempt anything definitive as yet. |
Proposer | Tom Barton |
Resource requirements | This one might have some hard resource needs. Some development. An environment in which to try things out, somehow including IdP or SP instances with which to experiment. |
+1's | Lukas Hämmerle |
Consensus | Scope as continuation of MDQ work lead by Ian - encourage participation in pilot of this work (including edugain). |
Title | Fresh Approaches to IdP Discovery |
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Description | REFEDS has long appreciated the importance of IdP discovery in the federated model (see: REFEDS Discovery Guide). The current discovery model is dependent upon an aggregate of IdP metadata but advances in the distribution of per-entity metadata suggest that an aggregate may not always be available at the SP. A new model of IdP discovery in a world of per-entity metadata may be needed. Various approaches are possible:
The latter includes the OpenID account chooser but its relevance in this space is not well understood. The goal of this working group is to evaluate the various alternatives to IdP discovery and to recommend one or more approaches that warrant further consideration. |
Proposer | Scott Cantor and Tom Scavo |
Resource requirements | Note the overlap between this proposal and the proposal entitled "Federation at scale" above |
+1's | |
Consensus | Fold in to MDQ work. |
Group 5: New Working Groups
Title | Privacy and interfed |
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Description | Is the CoCo on track? What barriers are there to its adoption? Purpose is to determine what issues a communications campaign should address to improve uptake. |
Proposer | Tom Barton |
Resource requirements | Working Group would conduct interviews with a selection of prospective CoCo adopting sites, blend with CoCo knowledgeable expert and a communications person to arrive at an enumeration of concerns to be addressed. Perhaps a dozen Working Group conference calls and list support. Support for a small number of group interviews. |
+1's | Mikael Linden (the GEANT CoCo flywheel) |
Consensus | Continue as part of Entity Category efforts (maintain standards and specifications) |
Title | Best practices for Hub-and-Spoke federation |
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Description | Hub-and-Spoke federations operate a centralized authentication component as part of their Identity Federation. In Reseach and Education about 10 federations are currently running such a setup. This activity gathers best practices form those running such federations. Possible topics may include:
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Proposer | Niels van Dijk |
Resource requirements | Several conference calls, a wiki space, pehaps one or two f2f discussion meetings at existing venues |
+1's | Laas Toom (EENet), José Manuel (SIR), Mads Freek (WAYF), Pieter van der Meulen (SURFnet) |
Consensus | Proceed |