Our community has reached a consensus that it is time to both review the lessons of building and operating identity federations and look forward to how federation may need to evolve. In response, this working group will try to articulate the value of federation and recommendations for improvements going forward. The topic has been discussed in a variety of forums, including the "Future of Federations" blog post series, the TIIME workshop session "Federations in 15 years", and the ACAMP session “REFEDS Federation 2.0”.

Charter

Overview

The Federation 2.0 Working Group will follow a structured process to gather input from a wide range of information sources and individual perspectives, in order to review the past and current states and formulate possible future scenarios for the evolution of research and education federations. This data will be analysed and synthesised to articulate the value of R&E federation, identify potential changes that may increase that value, and recommend actions that R&E Federations and others can take to increase their value over time.

The WG will focus on activities and outcomes in areas of common and shared responsibilities of many or all R&E Federations.

Terms

The following terms apply to all REFEDS Working Groups:

  1. When a working group is agreed, REFEDS Participants will be asked if they wish to participate. Working Groups tend to be small, so consensus can be achieved quickly between participants.

  2. A chair for the group is chosen from the REFEDS Participants.

  3. GÉANT provides facilities for the working group, including meeting support, wiki space, mailing lists and, where appropriate, funding.

  4. An appropriate output from the group is produced. Currently, this is typically a draft white paper or a wiki page.

  5. When the Working Group is in agreement, the chair shares the outputs with the wider REFEDS community with an open period for discussion and comment. This is typically a period of 4 weeks, but may be longer if appropriate.

  6. After this period of time, the REFEDS Steering Committee signs off on the work item. Work is either written up as a formal white paper, left on the wiki but promoted as finished work or occasionally submitted as an Internet Draft.

Mailing List

Subscribe at: https://lists.refeds.org/sympa/subscribe/federation2. .  

Chair

Tom Barton and Judith Bush

Deliverables

  1. A report on the information gathered and a description of the methodology working group members will use to assess that data.

  2. A clear and concise articulation of how R&E Federation brings value to which communities of practice.

  3. A white paper based on the report in #1 and framed by the values articulated in #2 that identifies contingencies, potential changes to federation, and actions that R&E Federations and others may need to undertake.

  4. Webinars presenting the report in #1 and the white paper in #3 above.

It is anticipated that REFEDS or other organisations may create further working groups in response to some of the recommendations in #3, i.e., that this working group represents only the first in a series of steps by which the REFEDS community will approach the transition to a future state of operations.

Participation Requirements

Biweekly video conference calls are scheduled.

WG members will need to become familiar with linked references above, the FIM4Rv2 white paper, scenario planning methodology, and other sources to be identified.

As many working group members as possible will need to be available for a day-long face to face meeting on the Thursday after the TNC19 meeting in Tallinn in June 2019.

All WG email communications are sent to the federation2 REFEDS list above.

Timeline

Work to conclude in February 2020.

Meeting Notes