By Amber Rasche, Senior Communications Specialist
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Robust engagement in Internet2’s Community Groups is the linchpin for moving our community forward.
From chartering working groups, advisory groups, and communities of interest, to developing best practices and guiding new solutions – thought leaders from institutions large and small engage regularly to identify challenges and determine new ways to fill the gaps and meet the community’s needs.
And we can’t do it without each other. Community groups make all of this happen.
Add Your Voice to the Conversation
We invite you to get involved in 2022 and join an Internet2 Community Group!
Adding your voice to the conversation is one of the key benefits of being an Internet2 member. By joining a Community Group, you can help shape the programmatic priorities of Internet2, share your unique insights, put forth your institution’s latest challenges requiring collaborative solutions, and be part of the community-powered decision-making process.
Explore the list of Community Groups below that are currently seeking new participants, and reach out to get involved!
| Community Group | Description | Get Involved |
| Cloud Scorecard Working Group | The Cloud Scorecard Working Group supports developing, implementing, and maintaining the Internet2 Cloud Scorecard and associated projects. Participation is open to any Internet2 member or higher education institution. | Email cloud-scorecard@internet2.edu to express your interest by February 1, 2022. |
| Cloud Storage Working Group | The Cloud Storage Working Group is responding to challenges in effectively managing rapidly growing cloud storage. The group evaluates opportunities for community action in both policy and technical arenas – including sharing of best practices, documentation, and identification of opportunities for improved methods. It also engages cloud service providers and allied community groups in conversation to better understand ways to achieve cost-effective and sustainable management of cloud storage. | Email netplus@internet2.edu to express your interest in participating in these monthly conversations. |
| Community Anchor Program (CAP) | CAP works with state and regional research and education networks to help K-12 teachers, librarians, and other community anchor institutions collaborate, access subject matter experts at premier research institutions, and interact and partner with schools across the world. Participation is open to anyone from Internet2’s 46 state and regional research and education (R&E) network partners. CAP includes two working groups: Serving Colleges and Universities Serving Unserved and Underserved Communities | Email contactcap@internet2.edu to express your interest. |
| Community Engagement Program Advisory Group (CE-PAG) | CE-PAG provides valuable input to Internet2 regarding community engagement opportunities and events, member programs, and marketing and communications. It provides key member perspectives on the benefits and value of Internet2 membership. The CE-PAG plays a key role in ensuring that member voices are heard and that the value proposition for all Internet2 members remains a top priority. | Email Michael Erickson, AVP for Community Engagement, to express your interest by January 31, 2022. |
| External Relations Program Advisory Group (ERPAG) | ERPAG advises Internet2 management on public policy matters and strategic planning relevant to the Internet2 community. This includes:Recommending public policy projects and prioritiesAssisting with the development of domestic and international public policiesReviewing Internet2 advocacy materialsAnalyzing rules, legislation, and other matters impacting Internet2Informing Internet2 on the role of commercial service providersFacilitating communications between Internet2 and the research and education communityEngaging in external advocacy Helping recruit expert volunteers for Internet2 initiatives or projects | Email Matt Hall, Program Manager for External Relations, to express your interest. |
| Federation Test Environment Working Group | The Federation Test Environment Working Group is chartered by the InCommon Technical Advisory Committee to identify and prioritize relevant testing and validation best practices, procedures, tooling, and environments when:An existing or prospective InCommon participant integrates services (identity provider and service provider) via the InCommon Federation The InCommon Federation operator introduces changes to federation infrastructure | Email Judith Bush, OCLC, to express your interest. |
| InCommon midPoint Working Group | MidPoint is an open-source identity management and governance system, and it is a component of the Trusted Access Platform. The InCommon midPoint Working Group facilitates opportunities to present and discuss relevant midPoint features and gather feedback from the community with the goal of helping to shape the new features based on real requirements from the broader community. The working group also analyzes community use cases and produces recommendations for how each use case can be solved using midPoint, which includes possible integration of midPoint with other tools, especially other Trusted Access Platform components. | Email Slavek Licehammer, Evolveum to express your interest. You can also join the working group’s Slack channel: incommon-midpoint |
| Internet2 Inclusivity Initiative (I2I) Steering Committee | The I2I Steering Committee comprises Internet2 members who are not only committed to inclusivity within the technology community but who actively support efforts to strengthen the diversity of human resources within that community. The committee works with Internet2 staff in identifying, prioritizing, and guiding resources, projects, and programming opportunities that support diversity, equity, and inclusivity across the Internet2 community. | Fill out this form to express your interest in joining or nominate someone else to join the I2I Steering Committee. |
| NET+ Business, Procurement, and Legal Advisory Group (BPLAC) | BPLAC provides advice to the NET+ program on key program decisions that may impact procurement. Participation is open to any Internet2 member or NET+ service subscriber. | Email netplus@internet2.edu to express your interest by February 1, 2022. |
| NET+ Service Advisory Boards (SAB) | NET+ SABs guide the development of the NET+ services and serve as a community focal point for feedback from the broader service subscriber base. Participation is open to NET+ service subscribers. Current SAB openings include: –NET+ Amazon Web Services (AWS) –NET+ Duo Security –NET+ Google Cloud Platform (GCP) –NET+ Google Workspace for Education –NET+ LabArchives –NET+ Splunk | Email netplus@internet2.edu to express your interest by February 1, 2022. |
| Network Security Special Interest Group | The Network Security Special Interest Group is open to all Internet2 members, whether you’re a security architect or just have an academic interest in the topics! Discussion topics include emerging threats, RPKI, and BGP flowspec. | Email networkdevelopment@internet2.edu to express your interest. |
| Network Technical Advisory Committee (NTAC) | NTAC provides the best technical advice to the Internet2 organization and community by sharing expertise across the community as possible. NTAC maximizes the opportunity for community participation and provides transparency into its processes and decisions. NTAC includes working groups on automation, performance, peering and routing, IPv6, and multicast. | Email networkdevelopment@internet2.edu to express your interest. |
| PeopleSoft Integration Working Group | The PeopleSoft Integration Working Group develops good models, practices, and, where feasible, solutions to the widely shared challenges of PeopleSoft integrations. PeopleSoft Campus Solutions (CS) and Human Capital Management (HCM) are widely used across higher education as systems of record for SIS and HR. They are the primary source of identity information about students, faculty, and staff. As such, they need to be integrated with campus Identity and Access Management infrastructure. Historically each campus has had to develop its own integration solutions, which represents a costly duplication of effort across every affected campus. | Email Tommy Doan, Southern Methodist University, to express your interest. You can also join the working group’s Slack channel: incommon-peoplesoft-int |
| SIRTFI Exercise Working Group | The SIRTFI Exercise Working Group prepares members of the InCommon Federation community to handle a federated security incident by conducting one or more tabletop exercises to simulate aspects of responding to the real thing. Exercises are aimed to be learning opportunities, increasing familiarity with and shared understanding of key concepts and practices in the SIRTFI framework.The SIRTFI Exercise Working Group is chartered by the InCommon Community Trust and Assurance Board. | Email David Bantz, University of Alaska, to express your interest. |
| Trusted Access Platform Software Integration Working Group | Over the last 14 years, the higher education community has produced an impressive collection of open-source components for various identity and access management (IAM) capabilities. The Trusted Access Platform Software Integration Working Group has taken on the challenge of bringing these components together, developing new components to address gaps in coverage, and packaging these components into a complementary set of easily installable and configurable services. Consistent, well-defined, and documented APIs will be critical to the broad adoption of such loosely coupled, but readily-integrable IAM services. | Email Keith Hazelton, Internet2, to express your interest. You can also join the working group’s Slack channel: intrust-si |