Nicole Harris wrote:
> If you have any ideas 
> about ‘gaps’ in information, I’d be very interested to hear them.  Some 
> of the areas where we know information is still needed are:

Nicole,

I've been meaning to send a comment to UKERNA (so apologies to anyone 
from UKERNA who may be watching this list), but your initiative seems a 
good place to submit such a comment.

We're not a JISC-funded 'early adopter' here in Oxford, but we /are/ 
just beginning to adopt right now.

Also - I've been a little out of touch over the last 5 or 6 months, so 
apologies if anyone else has addressed this or if policy has been 
changed and been announced.

Anyway: when I was 'advising' here, I talked up the ease of Shib 
implementation, especially as we are only expecting to serve up 4 
attributes in the short- to medium-term.  This seems sensible as both 
IdPs and SPs need to know what to expect.

However, a search of the http://www.ukfederation.org.uk doesn't turn up 
any text advising of the 4 attributes (and I therefore wondered if the 
policy had changed).  I found the list of Attribute Usage (SPs) quite 
easily:
http://www.ukfederation.org.uk/content/Documents/AttributeUsage

Eventually a colleague pointed me at:
Transition arrangements -> FedDocs and I found the 4 attributes listed 
at links saying
recommendations-for-use-of-personal-data
and
technical-recommendations-for-participants

Anyway, my point is that this information is somewhere between 'basic' 
and 'technical' and is the kind of thing needed in order to persuade the 
'powers that be' in our organisations to implement Shibboleth and expose 
certain data to the outside world.  It should be easier to find.

I'd recommend that it should be found easily from the 'Operational 
Information' link, or maybe the 'Join' major link should go to somewhere 
that has a page saying "What do I have to do to make Shibboleth work at 
my institution?"

At the moment, it's too much like the other meaning of the word 
"Shibboleth".  People like us can find the information because we know 
quite a bit and we know it's there.  For those who don't know so much, 
there should be a couple of easy entry pages on the 
http://www.ukfederation.org.uk site, before sending people away to 
browse through MATU or somewhere.

I notice that you mention a 'Business Case Toolkit'.  That might help or 
be the very place!

A few weak promises:
We should be able to submit something about Oxford's experience 
regarding hardware purchases soon (it won't be too interesting, 
though!).  Once we get the arguments thrashed out, we may also be able 
to help with the multiple management domains as well, although we are 
going to campaign hard for only one IdP at Oxford (as our SSO reaches 
across the collegiate University).

Regards,

Mark

-- 

Mark Norman
Integration and Development Manager
Oxford University Computing Services
Tel. +44 (0)1865 273287