Identity & Access Management InCommon Research and Scholarship August 7, 2017 CIO Council 2:00 p.m. Smith Center, 561

Meeting Purpose and Intended Outcomes To discuss whether Harvard should decide to become an InCommon Research and Scholarship institution Intended Outcomes Recommendation from the CIO Council

Opportunity Harvard is already federated with InCommon as an Identity Provider (IdP) By deciding to also identify as an Research and Scholarship institution (R&S), Harvard can simplify access for Harvard scholars to other applications that are federated as R&S services. What it means: Minimal work by IAM to release Name, Email, Institutional Affiliation and Unique Identifier (EPPN) by default to any R&S Service providers What it gets us: Scholars instantly access participating services using campus credentials without administrator involvement Eliminates the overhead of reviewing whether to federate with these providers on a case by case basis

Use Case: Access Other Institutions using InCommon R&S

Harvard Use Case IQSS wants Harvard to be R&S The Dataverse Project Benefit: Dataverse can be opened up to the world Sponsors of the R&S Request: Merce Crosas James Cuff

Harvard’s Decision CIO Council is being consulted to confirm releasing this limited set of data by default to InCommon certified R&S institutions is acceptable. Potential Risk Discussion/Mitigation Harvard releases data to applications that it has not personally vetted Data are not sensitive; tend to be exchanged by researchers already, or be public If FERPA block exists, we need user consent No attribute release to R&S for anyone with FERPA (Common practice in H.E.) It is not crystal clear what the InCommon certification process entails; we must trust their process Review who else is participating Users would not realize their data are being released Provide outreach and communication through Schools and departments, describing the benefits

Here’s How InCommon Describes Value Proposition: “The immediate and most tangible benefit is that researchers and scholars on campuses that support R&S may seamlessly access a growing list of R&S services without friction or administrator involvement. In other words, the end result may be characterized as: Federation for Research and Scholarship that Just Works. Many potential R&S services choose not to federate because IdP support for R&S across our campuses is spotty and uneven. We expect a threshold number of campuses to cause a "Cambrian Explosion" of valuable R&S services to appear in the InCommon Federation, which will spur collaboration and research in the US. Continuing our participatory role in the global R&E community, InCommon has introduced an international version of the Research & Scholarship Service Category to the REFEDS community, which requires broad support from InCommon participants to be successful.”

Discussion and Close For research community there is a sense of urgency to move towards this model The approach (of case by case) is simply not scalable to the thousands of campus IdPs and thousands of SPs supporting research and scholarship that InCommon anticipates in the future. List of institutions who are R&S Identity Providers: https://incommon.org/federation/info/all-entity-categories.html#IdPs Service Providers: https://incommon.org/federation/info/all-entity-categories.html#SPs

Thank you!