RCauth Service Governance

The mission of RCauth.eu is to enable publicly (co-)funded research collaboration for Research and e-Infrastructures based in Europe, by providing trustworthy PKI authentication and credential translation services to end-users, and trust services to relying parties, based on externally sourced federated identity management in its broadest sense, regardless of technology, nationality, or organisational affiliation.

The RCauth.eu service recognises as Qualified Stakeholders those Research Infrastructures, user communities, and users that use RCauth.eu credentials for their acceptable usage, and (generic) e-Infrastructures and others that rely on the credentials issued by RCauth.eu to address (part of) the risk involved with providing service to qualified holders to RCauth.eu credentials and that contribute in material or non-material ways to the continuity of the service (Qualified Relying Parties).

The RCauth.eu governance structure shall consist of

• a Governance Board of stakeholders comprising representatives for the stakeholders of the service that materially contribute to the sustenance of the service (funding organisations);
• a Policy Management Authority (PMA), consisting of individual policy and identity experts from the stakeholder community, to which the Board entrusts an independent responsibility to manage the trust and operational policies (the joint coordination body of service providers, customers, and stakeholder community);
• an Operational Management Team consisting of representatives of all partners that collective provide the RCauth.eu service which, under the authority of the PMA, is responsible for the continued operational availability and operational compliance (the federated service provider coordination body).

The Governance Model describes the various board in more detail.