Building Identity Trust Federations Conference Call

October 20, 2010

1) In Attendance

• Suresh Balakrishnan (University System of Maryland)
• Joseph Giroux (California Community Colleges)
• Michael Hodges (University of Hawaii)
• Peter Janca (MCNC)
• Ken Klingenstein (Internet2/InCommon)
• George Laskaris (NJ Edge)
• Mike Marseglia (OSHEAN)
• Bob Morgan (University of Washington)
• Steve Olshansky (Internet2)
• Rodney Petersen (EDUCAUSE)
• Tim Poe (MCNC)
• Mark Scheible (NCSU)
• Bill Schmoekel (Owens Community College)
• Paul Schopis (OARnet)
• Craig Stephenson (WiscNet)
• Randy Stout (Kansas Board or Regents)
• Valerie Vogel (EDUCAUSE)
• Ann West (Internet2/InCommon)

2) Welcome Suresh Balakrishnan as the New Co-Chair

• Suresh Balakrishnan is the Assistant Vice Chancellor & Deputy CIO for the University System of Maryland. He will be joining George Laskaris as co-chair of this group.

3) CoSN/K-12 Discussion

• There's interest in working with CoSN (Consortium of School Networking) to raise awareness about IdM with the K-12 community and school district managers.
• A recent kick-off call brought together CoSN, Internet2, and EDUCAUSE. There was a lot of information sharing and discussions about what resources should be developed to get more interest in the K-12 community. A November 16 call is scheduled to try to establish several subgroups.
• During the K20 Initiative Business Meeting at the Fall 2010 Internet2 Member Meeting in Atlanta next month, Clair Goldsmith will be addressing the group.
• Type of resources for the K-12 community might include: 2-page primers on what district technology officers/managers need to know, as well as a comprehensive value proposition for why IdM is needed at this time (with a focus on service providers).
• Ken noted that this is a marketplace where we need to talk about the integration of OpenIDs with federated identities. There are lots of different ways to think about that integration piece.
• Suresh asked if we could develop bullets for the value proposition of IdM for each education segment, not just K-12.
• One of the value propositions would be the ability to manage policy in some very granular (and scalable) ways that K-12 schools haven't had access to before.

4) Ohio's State Research and Education Network Provider, Identity and the Cloud (Paul Schopis, OARnet)

• The goal is to provide easy access to resources for all Ohio students through a portal. Students log in using a credential and the portal provides access to all class listings in the state, applications for schools, transcripts, and other materials they need.
• They're investing in a private cloud infrastructure (which is off the ground, as of today). Currently they have ported almost all of the applications the board and affiliated organizations wanted, which is mostly "low-hanging fruit".
• In terms of federated identity, momentum has been building over the last 6-8 months. They're currently trying to hire someone for a position similar to that of Tim Poe's (Federated Identity Project Manager).
• Most likely they'll be using Shibboleth. They're also trying to figure out how to work with InCommon since some Ohio universities are already members.
• One of their goals is coordinating with Race to the Top on the K-12 level.
• All students entering the Ohio school system are provided an ID number (in place of their SSN) and they use it from preschool through high school graduation.
• Conversations about the governance of federated identity are on hold until someone is hired for the Federated Identity Project Manager position.
• Looking at portal piece as a phased approach.
• They've talked about linking a central account to campuses as students transfer from one campus to the next.
• There was a brief discussion about handling inter-campus course registration issues. The group suggested that OARnet should touch base with UNC folks since they'd also be interested in this topic.
• They've hired a company - Unicom, which is based in Arizona - to assist in the development of a statewide web application. The direction of this project seems to be a combination of private and public cloud.
• George invited Paul to join us in the future once their project is further along.