VO Assessment Template

Describe the scope of your research and collaborations (e.g., broad with significant outreach; narrow with a focus on a single instrument or data set; open community; closed community).

Describe how the leadership of your VO make decisions (e.g., ad hoc; steering committee; general consensus; distributed based on topic).

How are new services defined, developed, and promoted to the participants (e.g., email list; newsletter; word of mouth)?

What level of authority does the VO leadership have to specify local group behaviors?

Are there specific key campuses or institutions that need to be taken into account in your collaboration?

Are there any particular instruments or resources that will require electronic access control?

Are there participants outside of the R&E community that need to be taken into account (e.g., commercial entities, citizen scientists)?

Which key funding agencies involved? Do their requirements impact the nature of your collaboration (e.g., require open participation, require public access to data)?

What Levels of Assurance (LoA) requirements do you have regarding who can access the research? What is the importance of the resources being protected?

Describe the variations of size and character of groups within the VO.

Describe one or two "typical" users and their expected activities and interactions with a collaboration managed environment.

Who decides what services are given to whom, and when are those services provisioned/de-provisioned?

What roles do people play within your VO? How consistent are the roles (e.g., researcher, data administrator, assistant, guest) across the VO, or do roles often blend?

Who needs to be able to add people? Who is responsible for disambiguation within the registry?

For each of the different types of people joining your VO, what is the invitation model? How are they added/invited/enrolled?

How do you handle changes in affiliation (i.e., a postdoc at institution A becomes a faculty member at institution B, but expects to remain involved in the VO)?

What are your reporting requirements around the users in the VO (e.g., real-time or batch reports for new users, staff effort towards research for the VO)?

Do you manage or provide a VO-associated identifier (e.g., forwarding-only email address, kerberos principle, username/password)?

Does your VO use or expect to use web portals or other domain science gateways?

How do people find out about new applications available to your VO?

Is command line and/or ssh in use? In what way/For what purpose?

Is single sign-on (SSO) required through the applications in use? If so, are you using a certificate or key based service? How are the certificates or keys managed?

Will data sets be stored or shared within the collaboration infrastructure?

How are applications currently provisioned? Do you use a distributed model or rely on centralized services for provisioning?

Are applications currently de-provisioned? If so, how?

List other necessary domain science applications that are required for your VO.

List other necessary collaboration tools that are required for your VO.

Is there a preferred console for the authentication/authorization management interface?

Do you have a need for multiple authentication models? If so, describe the models you expect and any other unique factors expressed or implied by having different models available.

Which online resources need access controls (e.g., data set restrictions; domain app restrictions)?

Do you use user profiles to help match users to data sets, permissions, etc.? If so, who defines these profiles, and who (users, admins, systems, etc.) populates them with attributes ?

Do any of your participating groups or institutions use profiles (e.g., VIVO)?

Who determines which resources need protecting?

What type of education and outreach needs regarding access control issues does your VO have?

Describe your current identity management and authentication models. How does this differ from your ongoing plans or expectations?

Describe your current ability to produce credentials of different LoA's. How does this differ from your ongoing plans or expectations?

Do you use directories and registries? Describe.

Are there specific schema that are required by your VO?

Is eduPerson and/or SCHAC identity schema in use or required?

List the compute and data platforms (software) currently in use.

List the collaboration platforms, if any, currently in use.

Describe if/how your VO uses Google Apps or other outsourced collaboration environments.

Describe any use, or expected use, of platforms like XSEDE or OSG.