The CREN WAVE1 pilot project has evolved over time from a planning/seminar grant from The Mellon Foundation. The Mellon grant is encouraging the exploration of eight (plus or minus two) campus pilot projects to deploy the inter-institutional use of digital certificates. Presently, digital certificates are used primarily within institutional boundaries. The purpose of this pilot is to expand their usage beyond an institution, and to develop experience with this technology.

An organizing committee was formed at the July 2001 PKI Summit meeting of Net@EDU. The committee was composed of representatives from higher education institutions who are working with research and developments in digital certificates. The committee met via conference calls to organize a planning event held in December 2001in conjunction with the CNI meeting. Teams from 11 insititutions attended. A followup meeting held after the April 2002 CNI meeting assembled the current group of WAVE 1 participants.

Over the past several years, the base of the PKI infrastructure has developed and early campus adopters have started testing and using this technology for various trial applications both on and off campus. One important application that lends itself well to this testing environment is to use trusted digital certificates to provide faculty and students secure access to externally owned, distributed resources for teaching, learning and research.

In December 2001 CREN hosted a seminar with participants from 11 institutions of higher learning, 2 content providers and related organizations to determine how to best move forward with this application. At the conclusion of the meeting, five institutions (Dartmouth, Georgia Tech, MIT, Princeton and The University of Minnesota) and one content provider (JSTOR) agreed to participate in a WAVE1 pilot. Five other institutions tentatively committed to participating in a second round, WAVE2, of implementation following the completion of WAVE1.

The WAVE1 group held its first organizational meeting on April 16 in Washington, D.C. The group continues to meet regularly by conference call to apprise one another of developments and issues relating to the pilot. Implementation of the pilot is expected to begin in July 2002 and run for several months. Following completion of the pilot, results will be presented in an appropriate venue and plans for further deployment and WAVE2 implementation will be developed, as appropriate.

Judith Boettcher
Executive Director
CREN

Bob Brentrup
Associate Director Technical Services
Dartmouth College Computing Services
Chair of Wave1 Committee

Eric Celeste
AUL for IT
University of Minnesota

John Douglass
Systems Support Specialist III
Georgia Institute of Technology

Michelle Gildea
Manger of Certification Authority Services
CREN

Frank Grewe
Manager
Enterprise Internet Services
University of Minnesota

Larry Levine
Director of Computing
Dartmouth College

Susan Minai-Azary
Director, IT Architecture and Infrastructure
MIT

Dan Oberst
Director, Enterprise Services
Princeton

Jeff Schiller
Network Manager of Information Systems
MIT

MacKenzie Smith
MIT

Ann Symonds
Comittee Staff Liaison
CREN

Spencer Thomas
Research Scientist
JSTOR

Nina Davis-Millis
Head of Systems and Technology Services
MIT Libraries

Eric J Norman
Systems Programmer
University of Wisconsin-Madison

April 16

Attendees

Agenda

Minutes

• Wave1 Pilot Conference Call May 1, 2002
• Wave1 Pilot Conference Call May 22, 2002
• Wave1 Pilot Conference Call June 19, 2002
• Wave1 Pilot Conference Call July 22, 2002
• Wave1 Pilot Conference Call August 28, 2002
• Wave1 Pilot Conference Call September 25, 2002
• Wave1 Pilot Conference Call October 23, 2002

• Using Web Resources with Personal Certificates
  The above is a web page that was written by Robert Brentrup and is intended for the educational community.

• Web Certificates at MIT
  The above is the web page for guiding MIT students, faculty and staff through the process of learning about and securing digital certificates. It can be used as a template and starting point for other institutions designing user education.