Jack Suess Chairing InCommon Federation

For 2011, Jack Suess will become Chair of the InCommon Steering committee. InCommon is an organization of universities, now totaling 186, that are working with vendors, governments, and amongst ourselves to provide trust-based services such as authentication and secure communication. The primary service is one based on creating a higher education federation that can leverage institutional login credentials to provide you access to services off campus. In total there are approximately 250 organizations including Microsoft, NIH, NSF, and a host of others leveraging the work of InCommon. The goal of these InCommon is provide universities with a common approach for solving the problem of integrating outside vendors and services with the benefits being improved service and reduced cost. During 2011, InCommon will continue adding new members and expanding into new trust services, such as a new higher-education focused certificate service.