This workshop activity supports US participation and leadership in an international collaborative event around global federation development in support of collaboration in the research community. The workshop centers on Virtual Organizations (VO?s) in research and education, their needs in identity management (IdM), sharing of best practices and current deployments of federated identity systems, how to leverage global networking infrastructure in support of these federated systems, how to leverage recent cybersecurity advances, and issues in integrating some of these concepts and approaches in federated identity with distributed scientific applications and collaboration software. The event is to be held in the Netherlands in September, 2012.
Several years ago, development started on a collaboration management platform called COmanage. The goal was to create a tool that researchers could use to focus on safe and directed collaboration without requiring elaborate identity management infrastructure. With this worthy goal in mind the requirements-gathering phase started, and there we hit a challenge. The researchers - the source of the requirements - did not attend the same meetings or talk to the same people that the collaboration management platform developers did. A few research groups through mutual funding agencies (Internet2 and the National Science Foundation), but there was still a large gap between researchers and people trying to design tools for those researchers. Fast forward several years, and the federation and identity space has grown enough that more and more people are becoming familiar with the possibilities. Researchers and National Research & Education Network (NREN) operators realized that there was information out there that needed to be shared. With that awareness, the VO Architectural Middleware Planning (VAMP) workshop was born. Held in Utrecht, The Netherlands from 6-7 September 2012, the workshop was sponsored by Internet2, TERENA, and SURFnet. The Internet2 Middleware Initiative focuses on developing interoperable identity and access management infrastructures for research and higher education. The initiative's work includes developing tools, roadmaps, software, practices, standards, and education. TERENA is the Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association, facilitating collaboration and research for European R&E networks. SURFnet is part of SURF, the Dutch higher education and research partnership for Information- and Communications Technology (ICT). With close to 70 registered participants representing 19 countries and 45 organizations across 4 continents, there was a rich sharing of knowledge and needs between the participants. Sessions included frank examples of how home grown identity management tools have made life more complicated for research groups, demonstrations of tools that NRENs have put together to enable collaboration, and guidance on what questions a research organization should ask themselves as the design (or redesign) their identity management environment. By the close of the meeting, researchers had a better understanding of what tools are available to enable their collaborations, and platform developers and NRENs will have a better understanding of the unique needs of research VOs. The grant funded several key U.S. researchers as well as collaboration platform developers to the meeting. The specific goal of the workshop was the sharing of research use cases and an explanation of what was available from NRENs to service the collaboration needs of the research community. The workshop was considered by all participants a major success. The representation (70 participants from 19 countries and 45 organizations) covered a wide variety of research fields as well as representation from NRENs in both Europe and the U.S. The collaboration and discussion in both the formal presentations as well as the break out sessions was intense, and feedback indicated the topics were useful to all involved. Another positive outcome from the meeting was closer cooperation between the Internet2 COmanage project, funded by the SDCI grant from the NSF, and SURFnet, the Dutch NREN and developers of the OpenConext collaboration management platform. The two platforms were able to demonstrate how they can leverage the expertise found in both platforms to give a more feature-rich, end-to-end solution for collaborations. This workshop focused on collaboration and information sharing across a wide variety of e-science disciplines including Physics to Biology to Social sciences, and with NRENs from across Europe and the US. The primary impact on these areas was the cross-discipline understanding that identity management and collaboration are a common set of problems for the research community, and solutions exist that these groups should leverage before trying to reinvent their own solutions. The research community is often at the leading edge of Internet development. As the use cases are solved around the collaboration needs of this community, other communities such as non-profit institutions, social groups, and more will find the collaboration platforms now being developed will solve for their needs as well. The project has had a significant impact on key areas of scientific research involving global exchange of ideas, new international initiatives in education, and enhanced solutions to global science challenges. The project has also led to enhanced relationships, coordination and information-sharing between the stakeholders of the workshop – SURFnet, Internet2, and Terena – as well as relationships with the research community. The workshop has helped to encourage significant progress along all the areas and levels through continuous communications and idea exchange between workshop participants and coordinators.
