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

[Leif Johansson <leifj AT sunet.se>]

With the stubbornness of an idiot I've decided to give this another
go. I believe it is *critically* important for everyone to understand
how the world works if we are to have *any* chance of addressing the
issues related to 'academic' services and affiliation.

> 
> And with that, Swamid doesn't even completely break the standard. It just 
> makes it impossible to just use faculty for countries where Academic would 
> be just "faculty".
> 
>> 2. What do you think SWAMID (in particular) did in order to get those 3
>> almost universally supported by IdPs in SWAMID?
> 
> Likely a lot. And part of my motivation to argue here is that that work 
> does not go to waste.
>  

Wrong.

Wrong.

Wrong.

SWAMID did absolutely *NOTHING*.

Not a single thing (except to publish that wiki page).

SUNET however, stood up a *hugely* popular service that required those
affiliations for access control. That single service (a web-based
conference service) drove deployment of several features of SWAMID.

The problem with any affiliation is that the data needs to be
populated in campus IDM systems and typically sourced from HR
databases, supported by business rules to determine who is 'faculty'
and who is 'employee' (a *much* harder problem than one might think).

This translates into integration costs and a campus IT CIO has to
see clear RoI (and just having SWAMID scream at them doesn't work)
before taking on the work.

So in the case of 'employee' and 'student' the motivation was clear:
support those affiliations or you can't use the distance learning
platform.

Done deal!

I can get 'faculty' deployed in SWAMID (and almost any other change
you need) inside 6 months if you give me that kind of business-case to
wave at the CIOs and campus IT-architects.

C'mon - gimme that business-case already :-)

        Cheers Leif