US Federations Discussion

[Steven Carmody <>]

On 5/15/12 2:26 PM, Ma, Ying wrote:
> Thank you for your reply. It's good to know where we are. I'm aware
> that InCommon is one of the participants in REFEDS, which focuses on
> topics involved in international collaboration in research and
> education. Interfederation seems to be one of the topics. We are
> interested to know if InCommon is actively involved  in REFEDS
> effort, and whether there is a workgroup focused in this area. Any
> information helps.

As noted by Ann, there are already a number of situations like the one 
you describe where the two schools have created a bilateral 
relationship, rather than waiting for inter-federation to arrive. This 
would be not much different from creating a bilateral relationship with 
a cloud-based service provider who is not an IC member. (There have also 
been a few cases where campuses have become members of a foreign 
Federation... but let's not go there.)

I've CC'ed David Simonsen who is heavily involved with the WAYF 
Federation in Denmark, and who would be your contact point if you wanted 
to pursue a bilateral relationship.

The other issue if this moves forward is that an EU-based IDP would be 
sending PII attributes to an SP located outside the EU. Using an 
EU-resident IDP immediately means that both parties have to worry about 
the EU Privacy Directive. But, if UCLA can assert that your moodle SP is 
operated in compliance with a set of EU-prescribed requirements then 
that would go a long way toward convincing the WAYF IDP that it is safe 
to send attributes to your SP.