eduGAIN Steering Committee

I've been around eduGAIN since the early days (I still remember the discussion/planning of the eduGAIN logo in a meeting room in Zurich many moons ago) and have participated in federated access in many capacities since then.  

I am currently in employment at a service provider which works globally - natively in federations, through eduGAIN connectivity but also using InAcademia and VerifID - so I see it all in regards to all the usual IdP/SP integrations, attributes, incompatibles etc -  which I believe will bring a different set of knowledge to the Steering Committee. I have been previously involved in several InCommon and REFEDS working groups (most recently REFEDS assurance framework and MFAv2) and co-chaired a couple and have participated in other work streams in the global federation space such as FIM4R, project moonshot, RA21  (as well as extensive eduroam knowledge from when I managed wireless and the eduroam service at an HE institution and also as a national operator of the eduroam service for the UK). I am also currently serving on the eduPersonSchema board and have worked on other international standards docs eg SAML2Int and have contributed to various open software projects. In non-SAML world I have OpenID experience and production experience with digital wallets and Self-Sovereign ID (SSI)

I would like to provide an impartial voice for Service Providers

I have over ten years of experience in the trust and identity area, focusing predominantly on authentication and authorization infrastructures for research communities. With this focus, my experience with federations, especially eduGAIN, was mainly from the view of this utilization and integration possibilities rather than its internal structure and governance.

I have been participating in various EU projects on activities related to the AAI area, namely AARC, EOSC-Hub, EOSC-Future, EOSC-LIFE, GN4, GN5 and projects associated with the EGI community. Thanks to that, I have a good understanding of research infrastructures and their need for identity and access management. Specifically, I know the life sciences research infrastructures very well thanks to long-term collaboration on the ELIXIR AAI and its evolution the LifeScience AAI.

I have detailed knowledge of the AARC Blueprint Architecture, which extends eduGAIN and can be a source of inspiration for features that will be useful on the eduGAIN level. A similar pattern can be observed in ESOC AAI, where an extension of eduGAIN might benefit it and make various integrations easier.

I would like to mainly represent research infrastructures in the eduGAIN Steering Committee and ensure their use cases are understood and considered as input for future decisions. I believe my experiences will bring a different perspective and be a valuable addition to the traditional viewpoint of federation operators.

For ten years now I've been technically responsible for operating the Dutch identity federation SURFconext, also specifically for our eduGAIN integration and have been eduGAIN SG Deputy in the last four years.

I seek to represent the voice of federation operators and by extension, our users - faculty, students and staff for which eduGAIN is merely one instrument to achieve their goal. We are working for them and their interests should be central for what we are building.

While eduGAIN was revolutionary 10 years ago, the world has caught up and there are quite some competing technlogies, that may have lower implementation costs or deliver better on the expectation that users will actually be able to log in successfully, or just have better marketing. My vision for eduGAIN is to not try to be everything to everyone, but more sharply define over the coming years what our strongest added value is (compared to such 'alternatives' like "use a Microsoft account", "use ORCID", "create an eduID" and maybe even wallets) and focus on making that added value be simple to use, easy to implement and robust in experience.

Francisca Martin-Vergara

Victoriano Giralt