01 - DI Whitepaper

Resources:

Underlying assumptions

(Inspiration taken from Work Item discussion and further elaborated)

• DI technology could in principle be deployed vertically integrated on a per ecosystem basis. But we are primarily interested in deploying DI technology with a strong horizontal integration to achieve interoperation with other ecosystems.
  
  • The "why": GÉANT together with the NREN community are running a successful identity inter-federation for almost two decades now. This approach works very well for use cases fully accommodated in our "siloed" GÉANT/NREN ecosystem. DI technology promises to overcome the ecosystem barrier and this is the main motivation for our ecosystem to engage in adopting DI technology.
  • Risks associated with this approach: 
  • elaborate on the notion of "ecosystem"
  • what is our "ecosystem"
  • which borders are we crossing, national, sectorial, regional
• We assume that the EU efforts around eIDASv2/EBSI/EUDI Wallet and similar efforts elsewhere will be a focal point in driving DI technology fostering such horizontal integration in the emerging global DI ecosystem
• We must be aware that DI technology is not yet mature and largely untested in big scale deployments. Success is not a guarantee. We have to consider all of those potential outcomes:
  • The DI ecosystems will be stepwise implemented and are developing towards a global DI ecosystem. 
  • The DI technology is not delivering on its promises and neither DI ecosystems nor a global DI ecosystem is emerging from it.
  • The DI global ecosystem (or at least to some extent) is established but does not develop in a way delivering value to our ecosystem.
• We will elaborate all of these outcomes and include scenarios. When judging outcomes, we do this considering our core values:
  • openness: we want to build our solutions on open standards with no artificial barriers for entry
  • inclusiveness: the openness on technical level gets extended on the governance level
  • global scale: education and research processes are often global in nature. National and regional solutions are often not good enough.
  • authority: we want to keep authority (standards, governance etc.) on our core processes
    • The "why" needs more thought
• We are primarily interested in defining actions we can take as NREN or its umbrella organisation GÉANT
• We assume that our existing ecosystem will be around for quite some time to come and co-exist with the emerging DI ecosystem. 
• We have 20+ years of experience and assume leadership in implementing cross-sectorial solutions fit for the purpose (non-AAI credentials like diploma, where we may not have authority over it)

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