Cotswolds International Middleware Meeting

Upper Slaughter, UK, 14-15 October 2004

Slides partially by John Martin, JISC; pictures by Ken Kingenstein

Leading trust to Slaughter

Goals of the meeting

Attended by representatives from Australia, Finland,

Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, UK, US and CERN

Aims: to establish framework for further international collaboration

of authentication and authorisation systems, leading

to interoperable user mechanisms, and

to help other countries develop similar large-scale systems

Review of National Programmes (1)

Common features: Each programme was limited initially to one target

community; They recognised the need to inter-work with other

schemes in the future; They were supported by carefully prepared

documentation sets Little, or no, accounting had so far been

implemented;

Review of National Programmes (2)

Differences: ‘key actors’ differ (admin, IT centre, library) different administrative paradigms differences in the associated documentation and

formal agreements

Focus Issues for Discussion

Need to look beyond national schemes to global schemes

Inter-working of existing schemes Criteria for ‘peering’ of schemes Support for mobility of students and researchers Resource providers’ membership of schemes Inter-working with government (and other national)

schemes and the grid community And a bit about privacy, indemnification, VOs, etc.

Some conclusions

Successful inter-working will be possible, but some requirements

must be met:

The education scheme must:

support multiple levels of assurance

allow for the use of third party authentication services

recognise that the identity attributes may be stored separately

from the identities

The government or other national scheme must:

have good coverage of both nationals and foreign residents

have low (preferably zero) transaction charges

Leading trust from Slaughter

Actions: 1. The Cookbook

The cookbook should contain guidance on practical issues of setting up a scheme criteria for judging the quality of a scheme design of structures to underpin governance and

management examples of successful implementations

The cookbook should also help those countries planning to set up a scheme for the first time

It was agreed that the first version of the cookbook should be produced on a short time-scale by appointing an editor

Actions: 2. A Vehicle

The Development of a Vehicle for Linking Authentication Systems Together(super federation)

1 year project for a secretary (0.5 fte)