At 1:03 PM +0000 2/22/08, Nicole Harris wrote:
>Hi Jon
>
>With most Service Providers the UK federation are trying to gather
>as much information as possible and to have a dialogue with them so
>that we know when a service is 'live'. The federation already does
>encourage all Service Providers to do just as you suggested. I
>think Microsoft are the exception rather than the rule in this case
>as they didn't tell anyone their go live date - annoying but
>probably to be expected from an organisation such as Microsoft. I
>wouldn't expect that to be the general case.
>Nicole
>
This week's availability of DreamSpark via Shib has certainly
provoked a very interesting and useful discussion on this email list.
There's also been parallel discussions on the shib-users list and the
incommon-participants list here in the US.
In this situation, the SP required a very high level of secrecy
around this project. I'm not sure that, even now, they comprehend how
many problems this created for campuses. (And, presumably, they're
trying to partner with these same campuses in a variety of ways... go
figure. btw... are there any microsoft reps on this list? seeing this
conversation? ) Interestingly, InCommon is currently working with
another vendor that is often labelled as "secretive"; however, that
process is proceeding along a very different, a much more open path.
Based on this experience, the Shib team is making some last minute
tweeks to the upcoming Shib 2 software release, to provide
functionality to address some of the concerns and issues that arose
during this experience.
Here in the US, a commercial entity selling discounted air tickets to
"people who can be verified to be students" has recently joined
InCommon. They WILL be inspecting the EPSA values. Hopefully, as they
roll out their service, we can demonstrate that we've actually
learned something from this experience. ;-)
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