1. eduPersonAffiliation semantics – a spin-off of eduGAIN policy
REFEDs
Mikael Linden

2. The problem (or is it one?)
eduPerson spec is not very specific on eduPerson(Scoped)Affiliation semantics
Federations have made (some) incompatible interpretations
Especially ”employee” and ”staff”
presented in REFEDs in Rome
another by Andrew on pm

3. Do we need ePA at all? Case CLARIN
From: Dieter Van Uytvanck Sent: 28. May :22 To: Mikael Linden We discussed this extensively, also with the CLARIN WP7 (legal issues, licenses). It turned out that unless at certain point we have full certainty about the reliability and availability of the eduPersonAffiliation (or a variant of that) attribute it does not make sense to use it within CLARIN. So if eduGAIN could ensure the existance and the correctness of such an attribute in all IdPs we would like to use it best regards, Dieter Van Uytvanck Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands

4. Could the semantics vary federation-by-federation?
SP admin would need to adopt to the semantics that depend on the federation/IdP
SP admin needs to learn the different interpretations
But SP admin is not necessarily a federation geek interested in studying the differences of (European) federations
=> makes threshold higher for SPs to get confederated
We should try to make eduGAIN easy for SPs

5. So, what is our plan? http://doodle.com/me2xgh4ctgrypbg7
Don't harmonise (Leaves burden on SP side)
Don't harmonise, but obligate federations to document their ePA semantics on web (burden on SP side)
Publish RECOMMENDED ePA semantics and obligate federations to document in web how they differ from it (burden on SP side)
Introduce a new attribute with well-defined semantics and make it RECOMMENDED (burden on IdP side)
Introduce well-defined semantics for ePA and ask IdPs to migrate to it (burden on IdP side)
As the previous one, but declare "staff" and "employee" to be unreliable and discourage their use 1 7 19 8

6. Summary Q A 1. Is this a problem? Seems it is (CLARIN)
2. Do we need to fix it?
If we do, we should do it now when eduGAIN is to be rolled out.
3. Can semantics vary fed-by-fed?
Maybe, but makes eduGAIN difficult for SPs
4. What to do, then?
Introduce a new attribute (doodle poll)
5. To which schema?
Good question. Schac? Or is MACE-dir willing to change eduPerson?
6. What is the new well-defined semantics, then?
Probably need to go the long way and ask at first what values we need. For instance, is it necessary do make a difference between staff and faculty?