Outside of work, I blog with an entirely secret identity, usually in geeky domains where I may want to say something slanderous about Cylons. Well journalspace where I existed suffered a blogpocalypse over the holiday period. The drives failed, but hey that happened before so they installed rigorous backups. The backups failed. Well last time that happened users recovered a lot of stuff (before the backup systems were installed) using the internet archive and way back machine. That failed too…well to be precise the journalspace settings no longer allowed everyone’s blogs to be botted and archived. So I’m not sure I’ll (and by me I mean Cylon slandering me, not JISC me) ever trust any free web provided service again. (Oh I will use them, penny pincher that I am , I just won’t TRUST them). So much of identity management is obviously about trust, not just about who someone is, but that it will actually be done properly. I actually want to be able to shake the hand of the person looking after my identity provision, and I mean literally shake their hand, not in some web brokered virtual way. Fortunately for me at least my identity is handled by an academic institution so I can actually seek out a real individual, look them in the eyes and ask “is my online presence safe with you?”. That I guess is why I have faith in Shib and the Federation not because of lines of code but because of the human factor based in host institutions..having someone to complain to, if necessary, produces accountability, and accountability produces reliability.
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January 5, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Owen Stephens
I agree there is an issue with trust – but not so sure this is about personal accountability.
Who would you seek out to check that your online identity was safe with the relevant academic institution? Who do you see as ultimately responsible? What is the nature of your agreement with the academic institution, and what guarantees have they given you?
I’m being a bit of a Devil’s advocate perhaps – but surely you should look at evidence of an organisation’s trustworthiness (something it seems journalspace had already failed at once already) rather than just the type of organisation it is?
January 5, 2009 at 5:40 pm
markwilliams
Although it is a bit easier for me perhaps to chase up the relevant individuals in my location than perhaps the average student, the trust fabric is generally between that of the learner and the institution. The learner should know the answers to the questions you’ve posed (although in many cases won’t have thought about such questions but I think we’ll see a gradual raising of student awareness of such issues). I take your point about evidence of an individual organisation’s trustworthiness, but a significant part of that evidence is the type of organisation that it is and by definition what it has signed upto. One reasons why academic institutions can be good brokers of identity is that they have the human infrastructure (enrolement officers, often actual individuals at a physical help desk etc)to support it.
January 6, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Brian Kelly
I recently wrote a blog post entitled “Disappearing Resources On Institutional Web Sites” – see
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/disappearing-resources-on-institutional-web-sites/
This described an incident in which a number of elearning resources had been deleted from an institutional Web site. Stuart Smith (who alerted me to this incident) concluded that “My solution to my MP3 problem will probably lie in the ‘cloud’ I’ll find a suitable archiving host that I like and also keep a backup offline (like I should have done in the first place) and if that host disappears at least I will know about it”.
It strikes me that the “suitable archiving host” would be one that is rather more reliable than Journalspace – but need not be within the institution.
As Owen points out, do we have a Service Level Agreement with our own institution?
January 6, 2009 at 5:39 pm
nicole
An SLA with your institution is not such a bad idea
Seriously though, I think it is something that institutions are going to have to get much clearer about in the areas of identity management and IPR particularly. ‘What we promise we will / won’t do with your identity / content’ in plain english would be a good basic policy for any institution to have. We’re hoping that the upcoming Identity Management Toolkit and study on Consent Management will help in this area for identity…and initiatives like the Open Educational Resources will have to look in to for IPR questions.
January 7, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Brian Kelly
Thanks for the response, Nicole. Note here at the University of Bath last year the Computing Service changed the rules regarding deletion of file space once a member of staff leaves the institution – files are deleted as soon as notification is received from the HR department. This can cause problems if valuable resources (teaching and learning materials, research publications and data, etc.) are stored under such areas. I understand that this change was instigated following advice from auditors.
Whilst I’d agree with you that “institutions are going to have to get much clearer about in the areas of identity management and IPR particularly” I personally feel it might also be advisable to keep a copy of such resources “in the cloud” – although perhaps not on journalspace