TNA2.3 Policy Development

Objectives

Supporting the development of policy within and external to EGI.eu in conjunction with EGI‘s stakeholders relating to governance, standardisation and integration with other infrastructures.

Description of Work

A policy-development manager will coordinate the work of this task and will report to the activity leader, the Project Director. Policies are needed to govern the provision of a high-quality distributed-computing production-oriented infrastructure. EGI.eu, the coordinating body for this community, provides management and policy groups for developing and approving policies relating to operations, software quality, security, user communities and general governance. The development of these policies is supported by the project and may have relevance and impact with other European (e.g. DEISA & PRACE) and International e infrastructure providers (e.g. Open Science Grid, TeraGrid) who will be involved in these policy discussions as appropriate.

Team

1. Sergio Andreozzi, EGI.eu (Policy Development Manager)
2. TBD

Deliverables

• D2.4 Roadmap for interactions with other DCI projects

Lead Beneficiary: EGI.eu - Effort: 6PM - Nature: R - Dissemination Level: PU - Due: M5

Report describing how the other DCI projects will interact with each other and the expected relationships between the projects.

• D2.5 Standards Roadmap

Lead Beneficiary: EGI.eu - Effort: 6PM - Nature: R - Dissemination Level: PU - Due: M5

An overview of the relevant standards activity taking place in the EGI environment, both internally within the operational tools and described in the UMD roadmap through its external software providers

• D2.12 Standards Roadmap

Lead Beneficiary: EGI.eu - Effort: 6PM - Nature: R - Dissemination Level: PU - Due: M17

An updated overview of the relevant standards activity taking place in the EGI environment

• D2.19 Standards Roadmap

Lead Beneficiary: EGI.eu - Effort: 6PM - Nature: R - Dissemination Level: PU - Due: M29

An overview of the relevant standards activity taking place in the EGI environment.

• D2.24 Standards Roadmap

Lead Beneficiary: EGI.eu - Effort: 6PM - Nature: R - Dissemination Level: PU - Due: M41

Milestones

• MS205 Establishing the policy area of the website covering the policy bodies and collaborating projects

Lead Beneficiary: EGI.eu Due: M3

Identifying the management and policy groups within EGI and external to it that EGI interacts with. Record the purpose of each group, who in EGI is involved in it and the designated contact points

• MS206 Terms of reference and initial composition of the policy related groups within EGI.eu

Lead Beneficiary: EGI.eu Due: M3

Report detailing the composition and ters of reference of the internal EGI.eu groups relating to Technology, Operations, User Community and Policy Organisational

• MS208 The EGI becomes a member of EUGridPMA (and through it become part of the IGTF)

Lead Beneficiary: NCF Due: M4

The EGI Consortium is recognised as a member of EUGridPMA (and through it become part of IGTF)

• MS209 Security Policies within EGI

Lead Beneficiary: STFC Due: M5

Document describing the processes used by the SPG within EGI to agree on security policies with its stakeholders

TBC

Policy

Internal Policy Boards and Groups

• Technology Coordination Board (TCB)

for defining the policies relating to software acceptance criteria, prioritisation of middleware requirements, and the UMD Roadmap

• Operations Management Board (OMB)

for the policies needed to provide a reliable transparent infrastructure composed of multiple national infrastructure providers

• User Community Board (UCB)

provides a forum for end-users in structured user communities to shape the infrastructure for their needs - defining the policies relating to their use of the infrastructure and by identifying and prioritising the requirements and issues relating to their use of EGI‘s production infrastructure.

• Organisational Task Force (OTF)

will continue to review and propose improvements in the structure (e.g. ERIC), governance and business models (e.g. inclusion of service charging) relating to EGI.eu

• Security Policy Group (SPG)

to provide policies that define the expected behaviour of sites and users to ensure a secure distributed computing infrastructure

• Software Security Group (SSG)

has representatives from the software providers contributing software to EGI in order to ensure a common coherent approach is taken to the security frameworks

• Security Coordination Group (SCG)

brings together the operational, technical and policy security groups into monthly coordination meetings

• User Services Advisory Group (USAG)

has representatives from the user communities to feedback to the EGI.eu on the user facing operations tools and support processes

• Operational Tools Advisory Group (OTAG)

has representatives from the NGI/EIRO Operations Centres and provides feedback on the operational tools and how they need to be adapted in response to EGI‘s requirements

External Policy Boards and Groups

• Open Grid Forum (OGF)

is the standards development organisation (SDO) that is the focus of much of the standardisation activity within the EGI community, and the high-level coordination and reporting of activity in this body is required.

• Infrastructure Policy Group (IPG)

has meetings currently co-located with the OGF and provides a forum for the providers of production e-Infrastructure to align their activities with a goal of eliminating operational differences between different infrastructures

• European e-Infrastructures Forum (EEF)

provides a framework for the current and future providers of European e-Infrastructures to meet. Currently, this meeting has representatives from EGI, DEISA, PRACE, GEANT and TERENA.

• International Grid Trust Federation (IGTF) and EUGridPMA

provide processes around common authentication trust domains which are required to persistently identify all EGI participants

• E-IRG: The e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG)

was founded to define and recommend best practices for the pan-European electronic infrastructure efforts. It consists of official government delegates from all the EU countries. The e-IRG produces whitepapers, roadmaps and recommendations, and analyses the future foundations of the European Knowledge Society. EGI is recognised as one of the infrastructure efforts that will support this foundation and EGI‘s alignment and contribution to this work is essential.

• ERF: The European association of national Research Facilities (ERF)

laboratories has been initiated to promote cooperation between individual European, national, large-scale research facilities laboratories. Amongst its objectives are to facilitate the availability of resources for large-scale research facilities by cooperation and also through the initiation of specific joint initiatives or consortia – a role that EGI will seek to play a part in.

• ESFRI: The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures

has been established by the EU to develop the ‗scientific integration of Europe and to strengthen its international outreach‘. The roadmap, first published in 2006 and recently revised, identifies 44 projects that will establish ‗research infrastructures‘ to support European science activities. Many of these projects will require the use of e-Infrastructures, such as the compute and data resources brought together within EGI- InSPIRE. EGI will work with these communities to identify how its service offering can be evolved to support their needs for a persistent sustainable European wide e-Infrastructure.