RA21 Workshop – July 7, 2017

Earlier this month, RA21 held a series of events at the lovely JISC office in London. The day started with an introduction to RA21; this session saw nearly 50 people in the room, along with another 50 people viewing the event online. The introduction included a summary of the problems around identity discovery that RA21 is hoping to solve, along with an explanation of how each of the pilots is approaching the final goal of a set of best practices around identity discovery.

RA21 July Workshop attendees

RA21 July Workshop attendees

The introduction resulted in some lively Q&A that dug into a bit more detail on each of the pilots, how they expect to handle GDPR-related concerns, and how the user experience (UX) would help the user. That last question was an excellent lead in to the next part of the day, exploring the work done so far on UX. The corporate pilot has done quite a bit of work around the UX, pulling together a survey that walks individuals through the possible design and explaining the possibilities in each step. That survey will be adapted for the academic use case later this summer.

After the UX session concluded, the meeting shifted from a presentation to generally interested parties to an actual workshop for pilot participants. The two academic pilots, the WAYF Cloud and the Privacy Preserving Persistent WAYF (P3W), split into breakout rooms to answer detailed questions and discuss the expected work packages out of each stream. Topics such as UX development, testing, library education, security, and privacy were covered. Development will happen through the summer, and hands-on testing will begin this fall. See the pilot pages for more details about the goals and objectives for each of the pilots.

While the pilot workshop was not recorded, the introductory session video and slides are available on the RA21 Events page. Another RA21 day, split into a morning of introductory material and an afternoon of workshop sessions, is scheduled for 1 September 2017 in Utrecht, NL, at the SURFnet offices. Check the events page for information on how to register for the September event, plus information on future events!

July 25, 2017