An open discussion list for topics related to the eduGAIN interfederation service.

[Leif Johansson <leifj AT sunet.se>]

On 12/01/2014 12:47 PM, Martin Matthiesen wrote:
> Hello,
> 
>> * Martin Matthiesen <martin.matthiesen AT csc.fi> [2014-12-01 12:19]:
>>> "employee" vs "student" as the lowest common denominator would
>>> certainly work for me, if "employee" is only given to academic staff
>>> and thus would be compatible with Clarin ACA.
>>
>> That's precicely what you cannot do, give "employee" a new meaning to
>> mean you want it to.
> 
> I meant employee = staff + faculty. And this is the meaning Swamid is 
> using, Leif may correct me here.

You know it :-)

The terms faculty & staff have no meaning in the Swedish university
tradition that makes that equation meaningful.

*If* it were a UK university then *maybe* it would be true but there are
certainly employees at Swedish university that are neither staff nor
faculty in the classical sense and some of them may legitimately
qualify for access to Clarin resources but probably not all.

What you are looking for is a functional property of identity subjects
that aligns with the Clarin ACA. We have similar situations wrt students
and users that qualify for student discounts.

The question you have to ask yourself is this: how critical is the
match between what the IdP can provide and what the Clarin ACA requires?

If the answer is "not very" then I'd say use 'employee' from whatever
you consider an academic IdP and "GOTO done". If the answer is "very"
then you should probably define an entitlement (like Elsevier did) and
tell IdPs to assert it on researchers compliant with the Clarin ACA.

One approach gets you low precision but high attendance, the other high
precision and low attendance.

        Cheers Leif

PS - Any resemblance of the above to the Heisenberg uncertainty
principle is purely co-incidental. No (other) metaphors were harmed
during the composition of this email. DS