**MACE-Dir Call 18-October-2010**

**Attending**

Brendan Bellina, USC (chair)

Keith Hazelton, U. Wisconsin - Madison

Paul Hill, independent

Scott Cantor, The Ohio State U.

Ann West, Internet2

Todd Piket, MN State Colleges and Universities

Tom Scavo, InCommon

Michael Hodges, U. Hawaii

Eric Goodman, UC-Santa Cruz

RL "Bob" Morgan, U. Washington

Derek Owens, Notre Dame

Steve Olshansky, Internet2 (scribe)

**Next call: Nov 15, 2010

**Carryover Action Items**

[AI] (Keith and Chad) will take a first pass at revving http://middleware.internet2.edu/dir/docs/internet2-mace-dir-ldap-group-membership-200507.html in the wiki, then run it by the group for comment, with the goal of perhaps finalizing it on the next call in 4 weeks.

[A] (All) Volunteers for working on surveys about managing people entries, attributes, and affiliations from non-authoritative sources, contact Keith.

[A] (Keith) will follow up on the REFEDs list conveying the sentiments expressed on the call today about the eduPersonScopedAffiliation usage comparison.

[AI] (Mike) review the LocalDomainPerson survey results and the Shibboleth attribute naming documentation with an eye toward useful attributes to generalize, as a reference for naming guidelines and base attributes to propose.

http://middleware.internet2.edu/dir/localsurvey.html

http://middleware.internet2.edu/dir/docs/internet2-mace-dir-localdomainperson-200505.html

[AI] (RL "Bob") will craft a survey on use of the mail attribute and possible need for additional email attributes. This surfaced again at the recent TF-EMC2 meeting, in the context of a campus IdP serving Grid apps. E.g. what are RPs assuming?

[AI] (Brendan) will poll the mailing list for feedback on the use of name fields, and whether they have had the need to extend eduPerson locally with additional name fields.

[AI] (Brendan) will coordinate with the leaders of the Educause IdM Constituent Group, toward the goal of polling that group along with MACE-Dir for feedback on the use of commercial and open-source IdM products.

**Discussion**

1. Further discussion about persistent, permanent, and other identifier characteristics of identifiers. See email thread "persistent identifiers (again)". I am requesting action items that can be assigned based on the issues in this thread.

Scott observed that there has been some rethinking about ways in which to encourage broader adoption of EPTID, which to date has not been widespread. Pulling back from the mandatory database requirement might encourage more use, providing there are SPs for which it would be a good fit.

Q: Is everyone comfortable releasing EPPN to vendors?

A: Responses were mixed, but the issue of avoiding FERPA issues arose as a plus for EPTID.

Q: Would there be benefit in a formal statement from MACE-Dir, or a revision of eduPerson to address this?

A: Some new text in eduPerson would probably be useful, but probably not enough to really spawn broader usage of EPTID. There have been some revisions to the Shib docs around this, along with some additional material explaining what is lost in using a non-reversible identifier. This is really a federation-level issue, and thus InCommon should make recommendations about the proper configuration of IdPs -- including supporting EPTID, how to use it, and what the implications are.

Keith's proposed table "identifier property glossary" which was sent to the list was then discussed. It was observed that these are properties defined by practices, and can't really be discussed in the abstract.

Use cases describing why currently used identifiers are or are not sufficient in various contexts were proposed as a useful contribution to the dialogue, and likely ought to be developed in the federation context.

Q: Is it an implicit property of EPTID that they are non-reassignable?

A: Yes, as noted in the description.

One requirement for EPTID is that it needs to be fed something that will not change, i.e. not a name-based identifier.

It was observed that in the InCommon context, people seem to be confused about which identifiers to use, especially among the SPs.

2. Suggestions for topics for face-to-face at the Internet2 Member Meeting in Atlanta -- Monday Nov. 1 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM

http://events.internet2.edu/2010/fall-mm/agenda.cfm?go=session&id=10001466&event=1159

- - Review of all action items