report

REFEDS has published it’s End of Year Report for 2020. Like many of our sister organisations, 2020 proved a disruptive year for REFEDS and led a series of our normal activities to be cancelled. We took the decision early on to scale-back on main meetings for REFEDS to avoid over-burdening the community at a time of competing requirements, although the REFEDS Working Group meetings continued more or less as normal. Despite the challenges, we were able to celebrate a series of successes in 2020.

The following highlights for the year should be noted: 

  • REFEDS supported a campaign to increase the use of R&S to enable covid research.  At the beginning of the campaign, 791 IdPs in eduGAIN supported R&S and automatically released an attribute bundle to R&S providers. As of 23 February 2021, 1049 IdPs in eduGAIN support R&S. This means we have reached the important milestone of support from 25% of Identity Providers. 
  • REFEDS hosted several sessions at the Internet2 CAMP and ACAMP meetings.  CAMP saw the “What Is (and What Will Be) REFEDS” session including a presentation from the REFEDS Error Handling Working Group and ACAMP saw sessions on MFA / Assurance and Sirtfi. 
  • The REFEDS Coordinators created a new overview of MET requirements to prepare for a call for proposals for new MET developers in 2021. 
  • REFEDS completed consultations on:
    • Baseline Expectations.
    • eduGAIN Security Incident Response Handbook.
    • Error Handling.
    • Entity Category Consultation: Pseudonymous Authorization
    • Entity Category Consultation: Anonymous Authorization.
    • Entity Category Consultation: Authentication Only.  
  • The REFEDS Steering Committee began the process of drafting a strategy for REFEDS, which will be circulated for further comment in 2021. 
  • The REFEDS Schema Board developed a proposal for a new AnalyticsID, which will be put out for consultation in 2021. 
  • 100 Working Group meetings were held across the working group portfolio. 

The full report is published on our website and we welcome all feedback.

To accompany the End of Year Report, REFEDS publishes an annual survey of federation operators. The results of the 2020 survey will be presented at a webinar on 1st April 2021. Registration is open and all are welcome to attend.