InCommon Steering Committee Minutes - November 2, 2015
Attending: Klara Jelinkova, Michael Gettes, John O’Keefe, Dave Vernon, Dennis Cromwell, Michele Norin, Melissa Woo, Mark Crase, Steve Carmody, Susan Kelley, Pankaj Shah, Jacob Farmer
With: Ann West, Shel Waggener
Votes taken via Wisegate since the last meeting
- Approved adding Policy and Governance Advisor to InCommon Steering
- Approved adding a Sponsored Partner Advisor to InCommon Steering
- Did not approve adding Community College Advisor to InCommon Steering at this time
- Approved the minutes from Sept. 28, 2015
InCommon Executive Director
Resolution
Resolution (moved, seconded, and passed unanimously): The InCommon Steering Committee appoints Ann West as Executive Director of InCommon.
Change to Certificate Practice Statement
This proposal reflects new technology available, allowing InCommon to offer ECC certificates.
Resolution
Resolution (moved, seconded, and passed unanimously): InCommon Steering approves the following change to the InCommon Certificate Practice Statement: section 6.1.5 will now read: "Key pairs are of sufficient length to prevent unauthorized determination or reverse engineering of the private key. InCommon's Intermediate CA keys sizes are 2048 bit. For its server certificates, InCommon requires at least 2048 bits for RSA keys and at least 256 bits for ECC keys. This is also reflected in the Server certificate profile found in the Repository.
eduGAIN
An ad hoc committee of campus attorneys and Internet2 legal met to review the changes to the Participation Agreement, specifically the indemnification clause. The result was the development of two PAs - with the only difference that the commercial agreement includes an indemnification clause (section 12).
Klara reviewed the overview of changes to the InCommon PA and FOPP and how those relate to international interfederation.
There was a question whether the metadata section should include a statement that metadata has always been public. This will be done in the FOPP (Federation Operating Policies and Practices), rather than the Participation Agreement.
Resolution
Resolution (moved, seconded, and passed unanimously): The InCommon Steering Committee approves the November 2, 2015, InCommon Participation Agreement for non-profit organizations. This Participation Agreement will take effect 90 days after notification for existing Participants. This was moved, seconded, and passed unanimously.
Resolution
Resolution (moved, seconded, and passed unanimously): The InCommon Steering Committee approves the November 2, 2015, InCommon Participation Agreement for commercial organizations. This Participation Agreement will take effect 90 days after notification for existing Participants.
FOPP Question - Section 7.3.1 includes two sentences that will not be relevant after InCommon makes changes to the POP procedure. It was suggested that these sentences be removed (e.g. "The template POP is available on the InCommon website. In some cases, multiple systems can be described in one POP.") since they will not be relevant after the change. The decision was made to leave this as-is, given that it is fairly easy to make changes to the FOPP.
Resolution
Resolution (moved, seconded, and passed unanimously): The InCommon Steering Committee approves the November 2, 2015, Federation Operating Practices and Policies. The FOPP changes will take effect on November 2, 2015.
Process Overview: Organizations have a 90-day window in which to accept the changes, request modifications, or withdraw from InCommon. InCommon will now send email to participants and InCommon execs at organization with a notice that overviews the changes and the process, as well as a document that includes the changes being made to the Participation Agreement.
There were general comments about the proposed notice to send to participants and execs. Ann noted the suggestions and will incorporate those into the document.
There was discussion about how community questions and comments will be collected and answered. The plan is to send people to the Community Forum for purposes other than requesting changes to the PA. There is concern that the forum is clunky and unintuitive in terms of access. Another option is to send people to an instruction page on using the forum, rather than directly to the forum.
Steering requested that, at each Steering meeting, InCommon staff provide a progress report and summary of community activity related to eduGAIN.
Steering Membership 2016
Klara reviewed the nominations process - that Steering nominates two people for each open seat. Steering members will contact each nominee to determine their willingness to serve and to describe the process.
It was decided that appointment of the Sponsored Partner advisor be deferred until a later date.
Next Meeting - December 7, 2015 - 4 pm ET