1. University of Texas System
IT TAKES A VILLAGE CAMPUS
A Federation Story
June 27, 2006
Paul Caskey
University of Texas System
Copyright Paul Caskey 2006

2. Agenda Background Why bother? Where are we at? Who does what?
Things to consider
Where are we heading?

3. Background 16 Institutions
9 academic
6 health
1 System Administration
16 unique organizations, budgets, problems, ideas
Leadership sees increased collaboration as a strategic objective

4. Why bother? Increasing importance of Identity Management
UT System Strategic Leadership Council’s Statement of Direction for Identity Management
Need for a secure collaborative infrastructure
New applications need higher LoA
Increased regulation / oversight
Opportunity to consider consistent set of IdM standards and practices for UT System institutions

5. SLC Statement of Direction
“The University of Texas System Information Technology Strategic Leadership Council agrees that deployment of a robust, secure, interoperable infrastructure for identity management in support of inter-institutional collaboration is a strategic goal. This infrastructure will be based upon the available standards and best practices:
LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) compliant directory services,
eduperson schema as promulgated by EDUCAUSE and Internet2,
utperson schema (to be developed),
inter-institutional access control utilizing Internet2 Shibboleth, and
consistent institutional definitions and identity management trust policies for students, faculty, and staff as well as sponsored affiliates.”

6. Where are we at? NMI-EDIT ETR Grant Shibboleth Install-fest
Policies and procedures documents
(Charter, Member Agreement, FOP, MOP, Attributes, Fees –
Pilot Federation
Five federated applications currently in production (several more under development throughout the system)

7. Who does what? Which services reside where?
Who determines required LoA for applications?
How is an IdP’s LoA determined?
Who supports the end users and applications?
Who audits IdP practices and what standards are used?
What is the role of governance?

8. Things to Consider Before Flipping the Switch On…
Policy work is very slow, but critical – start early
Identifiers
Privacy
Content copyright
Don’t underestimate the difficulty of application integration with new infrastructure or legacy infrastructure
Consider new support models
Communication and coordination are key
Keeping everyone motivated and involved can be quite a challenge

9. Where are we heading?

10. The Immediate Future Pilot to Production Federation by 9/1
Still to do:
Publish utPerson LDAP object class
Upgrade IdPs to Shibboleth 1.3
Work with institutional MOP compliance contacts on education and remediation
Establish federation organizations (Ops, Tech, and Policy)
Develop audit plan
Develop support plan
Develop disaster recovery plan

11. The Long-Term Future
When infrastructure is mature, shared services on a grand scale become much more feasible
licensing benefits?
support benefits?
administration benefits?
cost reduction/avoidance
Shared LMS applications
Shared HR / Benefits applications
Grid computing
Plus, the myriad of smaller applications that can easily plug right in to the infrastructure

12. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SYSTEM
Questions
Thank You