The eduGAIN Steering Group is a body that consists of Member Federations’ representatives and has an oversight role in the eduGAIN service. Each Member Federation SHOULD appoint a delegate and deputy to the eduGAIN Steering Group (eSG). Each Member Federation should ensure that delegates and deputies can represent all Technology Profiles used by the federation. The eduGAIN Steering Group may also invite non-voting observers to its meetings and mailing list.

The term of the eSG Chair and non-voting invited observers is two calendar years. The eSG is responsible for:

  1. Approving changes to the profiles and documents in the eduGAIN Policy Framework, such as introducing updating or removing profiles or documents.
  2. Decisions on metadata peering relationships, e.g. exchanging metadata with other trust infrastructures.
  3. Reviewing and approving the membership of new Federations.
  4. Approving disqualification or temporary suspension for Member Federations as described in section 3.6.
  5. Appointing the Chair and non-voting invited observers to the eSG.
  6. Other tasks delegated to the eSG in supplementing Technology Profiles.

Decisions of the eSG are determined by a simple majority of Member Federations from the active list at the time of the call to vote, apart from constitutional changes (see 4.4). Member Federations may vote on all constitutional changes and new Technology Profiles but may only vote on changes to Technical Profiles in active use within their federations.  Each Member Federation’s vote is equal, and each Member Federation is initially regarded as active.  A Member Federation which is absent from two consecutive votes will be removed from the active list for the purpose of subsequent votes.  Participating in a vote returns the federation to the active list.

Voting takes place over two weeks, but a decision may be reached early if the required majority is achieved before that time.


eduGAIN Steering Group Meetings

Scheduled meetings:

In the recent past the following meetings have taken place:

eduGAIN "Jazz Lounge" / "Surgery" / "Salon" Meetings

A range of informal, drop in meetings have been organised for the wider eduGAIN community to come together and exchange ideas. These meetings are scheduled:

eduGAIN Town Hall Meetings

The Town Hall Meetings are of informative nature and open to the public. In the recent past the following meetings have taken place:

Open Actions from eduGAIN Meetings


Completed Actions from eduGAIN Meetings


ACTION20150430-01: Brook to move the current candidates forward to vote and then consider the proposed changes to the process with the OT and other relevant stakeholders. 

ACTION20150430-02: NH to circulate the MRPS for comment. 

ACTION20150430-03: Rhys / Brook / Nicole to work on an FAQ that looks at the issues involved in introducing an new technology profile to eduGAIN.

ACTION20151013-03: Update membership of the eduGAIN SG mailing list.

ACTION20161013-03: Brook to create a no-op vote to allow members to re-establish their voting rights.  

ACTION20161013-04: Brook to distributed an email with details on how to vote for KAFE membership of eduGAIN.

ACTION20161013-01: Brook and Justin to poll edugain-SG members on required approval processes internally for eduGAIN constitutional sign-off.

ACTION20161013-02: Brook and Nicole to document voting history.  (This action was completed - an initial page https://wiki.edugain.org/EduGAIN_Votes was established.  After the compilation of the 1st version of EduGAIN_Votes and a discussion on the mailing list it was decided that a “no-op” vote would be held in the lead up to the next eduGAIN SG meeting to allow members to re-establish their voting right

ACTION20151013-02: Investigation by the eduGAIN OT on the duplication of @scope in metadata via a monitoring standpoint and a recommendation of what to do about this.)

ACTION20170629-01: Christos to provide a wrap up email to the Steering Group list to solicit further input before returning to eIDAS.

ACTION20170629-02: Steering Group members to look thought the proposal documents and consider if there is consensus on how to interact with eIDAS.

ACTION 20170831-01: Chair to ask all “voting-only” members for the timeline for their participation and provide input to the next meeting.