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!

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

 

TitleFed Ops Security Incident Response
DescriptionMost 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.
ProposerNicole on behalf of ACAMP session.
Resource requirementsREFEDS Coordinator time, buy in from federations, possibly some small infrastructure support requirements.
+1'sTom Barton, Wendy Petersen (CAF), Dave Kelsey, Scott Koranda, Romain Wartel, Michal Prochazka, Ann West
TitleVO Assessment
DescriptionSeveral 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.
ProposerHeather Flanagan
Resource requirementsSome effort (probably not a huge amount), maybe support for a survey, and kittens
+1'sNiels (both with SURFnet as well as GEANT SA5 VOpaas hat on), Michal Prochazka
Titleedugain recommended practices
DescriptionWith 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.
ProposerTom Barton
Resource requirementsPerhaps 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
TitleFederation at scale
DescriptionDetermine 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.
ProposerTom Barton
Resource requirementsThis 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 
TitleFocus on VOs
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.

ProposerTom Barton
Resource requirementsA 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'sRomain Wartel, Michal Prochazka, Scott Koranda, Wendy Petersen (CAF)
TitlePrivacy and interfed
DescriptionIs 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.
ProposerTom Barton
Resource requirementsWorking 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)
TitleFocus on R&S adoption
DescriptionWhat 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.
ProposerAnn West (communicated by Tom Barton, as version history will attest)
Resource requirementsWorking 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'sScott Koranda, Wendy Petersen (CAF), Ann West (wink)
TitleEduGAIN Global incident handling/support framework
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;

  • Understanding where the cause of the problem is;
  • Language barriers;
  • Service providers unaware that their services is available in other federations;
  • Services providers unwilling to provide support to users in other federations;
  • Global scale and time zone difference challenges

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.

ProposerTerry 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'sHeath Marks (AAF), Wendy Petersen (CAF)
TitleFederated Error Handling
DescriptionDevelop 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 profile of the errorURL in IdP metadata and a strategy for increasing its usage worldwide.
ProposerTom Scavo
Resource requirementsProfiling the use of errorURL in IdP metadata (if that is indeed a recommended approach) would be relatively easy
+1's 
TitleContacts in Metadata
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:

  • Under what situations (if any) is contact information required?
  • What are the intended uses of specific contact types?
  • Clarify the use of the mailto: prefix.
  • Standardize the usage of GivenName and SurName elements in metadata.
  • Recommend new contact types as needed (e.g., a security contact)
  • Discourage the use of individual email addresses in favor of role-based email addresses (such as help_desk@example.org)
ProposerTom Scavo
Resource requirementsFederations have a long history of the use of contact information in metadata and so widespread agreement may be difficult to achieve but the results of this working group will make it easier for entities to interfederate
+1's 
TitleAttribute authorities and group membership/role information
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:

  • Perun: {vo_name}:{group_name}:{sub_group_name}:...
  • SufConext: urn:collab:group:{group_provider}:{group_name}

Protocols which work with groups and theirs requirements on the group name:

  • VOOT: apart from id (usually UUID) it uses displayName which is a translatable string giving the group a human friendly name. The name is supposed to give a clear meaning for users setting up access control.
  • SCIM: apart from id (usually UUID) it uses displayName: A human readable name for the Group. 
ProposerMichal Prochazka
Resource requirementsSeveral conference calls should be enough for setting up the working group and produce recommendation on nameing schema for groups including VO identification.
+1'sScott Koranda, Wendy Petersen (CAF)