InCommon Federation Discussions About Online Student Services

["Karen Schultz" <>]

We are using AVOW's technology to deliver certified electronic
transcripts.  I agree with Joanne -- I don't see how federation is
applicable for this service.  Of course, we are currently running the
technology in-house, whereas AVOW now offers a hosting service and most
of their new customers appear to be signing on for this.  Perhaps
federation plays a role in the hosted environment . . . . 
          Karen

Karen Schultz
University Registrar
Penn State University
114 Shields Building
University Park, PA 16802
(814) 863-3681   
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Joanne Berg [] 
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 9:53 AM
To: InC-Student
Subject: Re: [InC-Student] [Avow Systems]

Hi all -
Tom Black, Registrar at the University of Chicago, uses Avow to send his
transcripts electronically. Tom was just in Madison yesterday to talk
with me, my staff and several "techies" from here about how he secures
the transcript data. I had an IT architect in the room as well as
several apps and security folks. We talked briefly about InCommon/Shib
for this but we weren't sure how federated signon would be helpful. We
got a little creative and off track - including having a discussion
about the use of xythos to push "signed" documents to students who would
then issue certificates/tickets to whomever they want to have access to
the document (e.g., student tells prospective employer, this is where to
find my transcript). Another brainstorm was to let the student "index" 
their transcripts for recipients who have an imaging system on the other
end. Nonetheless, more "registrarial" what-if discussions need to occur.

We also need to talk with the recipients of these documents
(transcripts, grade reports, enrollment certifications, even diplomas). 
Graduate Schools would be a good place to start. I believe the CIC (big
10) registrars meet the end of Sept - we could certainly have a good
discussion there.

More later,
Joanne


RL 'Bob' Morgan wrote:
>
> I had a chat at AACRAO Tech with Chris Kaschmitter, who is Technical 
> Director of Avow Systems.  He knew about Shib already and said they 
> wanted to integrate with it but need some help.  So some of us 
> Shib/InCommon techies will follow up.  It would be interesting for 
> registrars to provide insight into cases where federated web signon 
> would be useful in the Avow product/service set.
>
> Their main service as I understand it is enabling signed XML 
> transcripts. At this point this requires buying certificates from a 
> single commercial provider.  He said they are moving to open this up.
> Including the USHER CA would permit campuses to issue their own 
> certificates for this purpose. This would no doubt raise some 
> interesting policy issues.
>
>  - RL "Bob"
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 09:37:29 -0600
> From: Chris Kaschmitter <>
> To: RL 'Bob' Morgan <>
> Subject: RE: followup on Shib and InCommon and USHER
>
> RL,
>
> Thanks for the info and for the quick response on this.  We are very 
> interested in adding support for Shibboleth into our +ADDS product 
> line and I'm sure this will get us a good start.
>
> It was a pleasure meeting you and I look forward to working with you 
> down the road.
>
> Chris
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: RL 'Bob' Morgan []
> Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 12:12 PM
> To: Chris Kaschmitter
> Cc: John Krienke
> Subject: followup on Shib and InCommon and USHER
>
> Chris:
>
> Good to meet you at AACRAO Tech.  Info about InCommon and Shib and
USHER:
>
>    http://incommonfederation.org/
>
>    http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/
>
>    http://www.usherca.org/
>
> We'd be happy to talk about how Avow Systems might work with higher ed

> partners to take advantage of these services.  John is director of 
> both InCommon and USHER.
>
>   - RL "Bob"
>