Steering Committee Notes, 6 February 2023

Administrivia

• Welcome new SC member
• Note on SC meeting scheduling for 2023

 REFEDS meeting challenges for 2023

• TNC2023 and a Friday REFEDS meeting
• Alternate home for autumn REFEDS

• There was no room large enough on Monday for REFEDS. Heather and Nicole will be doing quite a bit of community outreach to make sure they book travel appropriately.
• For the fall meeting, there is no way that Nicole or Heather can make the Internet2 TechEx dates. Two alternatives come to mind:
  • Educause - in Chicago in mid-October. It is a much bigger, more diverse conference than TechEx. In the past, we've been too specialized for them, but that was many years ago so that might be an option. Also, we might not be able to hold that community's attention for a whole day.
  • eduGAIN Town Hall - would make two REFEDS meetings in Europe in one year, but attendance would more solid; dates TBD but will be in October
• Do we need two meetings a year?
  • For inclusiveness, would actually rather expand to three so we can include Asia
• What is the purpose of the meeting?
  • Fall has been where we bring in the "fringe dwellers" to get greater awareness and engagement; we're unlikely to get them at an eduGAIN town hall
• What about Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) (dates - October 10-12)? A possibility that would give people who have otherwise wanted to go to IIW but didn't have a strong enough reason to get there.

2023 Work Plan + Funding

• Browser changes and FedCM 
• OpenID Connect federation operations 
• Service Catalogue
• Update MRPS
• MET maintenance
• Liaison program

• Service Catalog - there is definitely strong interest. Kevin at Internet2 is interested in discussing further, and Casper and Mario at GÉANT are also working on it. Unclear how REFEDS can be the home for this as it requires resources and maintenance. If this is about a common specification or an underlying framework on how to do gather info (esp with proxies), that would be more in REFEDS mandate. Maybe take the vocab part of the white paper from 2017 and the SAML specific bits.
  
  • Example of a working service catalog: https://lifescience-ri.eu/catalogue-of-services.html#ui-id-1_ 
  • Biggest problem is the maintenance, not the initial creation.
  • The item as scoped in the workplan won't work for REFEDS, but the conversation does need to continue. Heather to conduct a community chat to discuss this (white paper, incubator - remind people what has been done already).
• OIDC - remind people we will always have this on the agenda to help provide updates back to this community. Also, given where the world is going wrt to wallets, OIDC focus may be too late.
• MET maintenance - an annual contract is more than REFEDS can afford; can we figure out a more imaginative way to cover the costs here? Right now we are limited to piecemeal processes and chunks of coding time.
  • Should we spin off MET and formalize its use and support?
  • MET has always been pitched for non-technical people who need an "easy" way to see what's in the metadata.
  • The USP looks at all the federations where the eduGAIN only shows you what's in the eduGAIN database post-collision algorithm; this is useful to a techie. Do we need to revise the eduGAIN database to make it useful to the techies so they don't need MET?
  • This could be something like SeamlessAccess
  • A number of federations are in the process of updating their tooling. There has been some preliminary conversation about how to leverage each other's work. Could MET live in that effort? Or could this be more like Identity Python (which would require we have an architect)?
  • Maybe this is exactly what we need a working group to discuss. Heather will update the work plan with a revised scope and kick off a WG
• Liaison program - this came up as part of the REFEDS Strategy. We don't need to formalize relationship, but perhaps we can set up semi-regular calls with the other groups (e.g., FIM4R, FIM4L, SeamlessAccess) we identified just to keep the relationships strong. Talk about what we're interested in, what needs aligning, etc.
  • This would be an action on the part of the SC; we're including it in the work plan for community awareness
  • Will start with those three and spread the net if we feel it's working
• Browser changes and MRPS are both obvious to-do's. No concerns

Had just enough response that we will need to continue this; the rate of participation remains concerning.

• can we do more internal liaising with federations that aren't responding?
• with the info on those federations that don't respond in the APAN region, Terry might be able to help if he can see this list.
• REFEDS needs to do a bit more on "how to get started with REFEDS"
• Maybe also create a short, short survey to complement the full details?
• Maybe focus group meetings to help people discuss and fill out the survey?
• How many are not getting the survey because the contact info is wrong?
• Typical survey response rates are actually much lower; part of our concern is that ours used to be higher.

Community chat scheduled for 22 February 2023 at 16:00 CET.