Newsgroups: bit.listserv.bitnews
Date:         Wed, 12 Aug 1992 18:57:29 EDT
From:         Jim Conklin <CONKLIN@BITNIC.BITNET>
Subject:      Announcing a CREN White-Pages project
Comments: To: white-pg@BITNIC.BITNET
Comments: cc: CREN-BD@BITNIC.BITNET, bittech@BITNIC.BITNET, s.kille@isode.com,
              ajhk@isode.com, amr@nri.reston.va.us

                Announcement of CREN White Pages Project


SUMMARY
-------

    CREN is embarking on a "white pages" directory services project, to
provide its participating members with production (i.e., essentially
complete) white-pages information on faculty, staff, and students at
participating CREN member organizations.  The timeline for the project
includes agreement on a policy for acceptable use of this data in six
months.  Within a year, full participation in production directory
services by a limited number of organizations is planned, after which
all CREN members who are willing to abide by the "Directory Services
Acceptable Use Policy" and install the necessary software will be
invited to participate.

    Mail-server software will then be developed in the 1993-4 time
frame, to simplify the end-user e-mail name-space to the form of
user@organization, for participating CREN members.  This software will
use the directory data within the participating organization to provide
distribution of mail sent to a central organizational host, to the
appropriate hosts and usernames for the designated recipients.

    The electronically available data will include, for each staff and
faculty member, and hopefully each student, a minimum of the
individual's electronic address plus, optionally and eventually,
additional data such as office telephone number, postal address,
interests, department, etc., with modifiers to indicate the individual's
willingness to allow this data to be used for various purposes.

    All who wish to participate in the formulation of a usage policy for
white pages data should immediately subscribe to a discussion list,
WHITE-PG@BITNIC, which has been created for this discussion.  This
policy must:
  * make it accessible to those who need it, and
  * protect the individuals listed from unwanted uses of the data.

    Representatives of CREN member organizations which have experience
in providing White-Pages services and might be willing to contribute
some staff time to the development of software to be made available to
CREN members for the common good are urged to contact Jim Conklin at
JBC@BITNIC or jbc@bitnic.educom.edu..


WHY
---

    White pages directory services are desired by both end users and
support staff, because it's now frequently difficult and time consuming
to determine the electronic address of someone they wish to contact.

    The Internet White Pages Pilot Project is not a very useful
production service, despite its technical success, because of the
voluntary nature of individual participation and the resulting low
percentage of faculty, staff, and students listed in the database for
most of the participating institutions.

    Widespread institutional willingness to include all faculty, staff,
and students in an electronically accessible directory will require
policies which will ensure that inclusion does not result in unwanted
electronic mail or phone calls.  Insofar as possible, directory software
should help to enforce such policies.


WHAT
----

    CREN will develop policies, in cooperation with its membership, for
the use of directory information which will make it acceptable to US
higher education institutions (and hopefully a much broader community as
well) to provide electronic access to the electronic addresses of their
faculty, staff, and students.  CREN is in a unique position to
accomplish this, with essentially all major US colleges and universities
included in its membership.  An electronic mailing list for development
of such policies has been created (WHITE-PG@BITNIC), and an initial
draft policy will be prepared and distributed to the list subscribers to
facilitate discussion.

    Based on such policies, CREN will encourage the participation of its
members in a production white pages service to be coordinated by CREN
and available only to organizations which agree to abide by (internally
enforce) the CREN white-pages policies.

    CREN will attempt to establish a CREN White Pages Working Group,
consisting of a few of its member universities which are already
participating in the Internet White Pages Pilot Project or otherwise
providing directory services, to develop improved Directory User Agent
and Directory Service Agent software based on ISODE QUIPU software and
tools, and software interfaces to whois, finger, and possibly other
alternative servers being used at these universities to provide White-
Pages information.  The goal of this Working Group and the BITNIC staff
will be to set up an initial production CREN White Pages directory
service, with data including essentially all faculty, staff, and
optionally students, for the institutions participating in the CREN
White Pages Working Group.  This service should be operational by July
1993, with participation to be broadened immediately thereafter to
include other CREN members which agree to the CREN White Pages policies
and to the installation of the white-pages software developed by the
Working Group.

    The participating organizations will have substantial say in the
design of the system, because of their experience in providing such
services to their own campuses and meeting their own needs.  The initial
implementation will probably be based on a central CREN server which
will accept information requests from campus servers and solicit the
requisite directory information from other campus servers.  This central
server will need to maintain information on the details of the campus
servers it queries in order to compose a proper query to them.  The
campus servers will presumably maintain a list of the participating
campuses, which will be used in formulating the requests they send to
the central server.


FINANCIAL
---------

    It will be necessary for CREN to join the ISODE Consortium in order
to have access to the improved software it will be developing and to
distribute to CREN members the ISODE-based software developed by the
CREN White Pages Working Group.  In view of the start-up nature of this
project, the ISODE Consortium is willing to accept CREN as a member with
dues based initially on the number of organizations participating in the
CREN White Pages Working Group.  As additional CREN members decide to
participate in CREN's White Pages Services, CREN's ISODE Consortium dues
will increase, based on the number of participating members. (Annual
dues are $10,000 for fewer than 10 participating institutions, then
$20,000 for fewer than 25, and $30,000 for 25 or more.)

    In order to expedite the progress of this project, it may also be
necessary to pay for some consulting to help bootstrap staff and
overcome whatever difficulties the Working Group may encounter.  Some
travel for the Working Group representatives may also be necessary.


AND, THEN, CAMPUS MAIL SERVERS AND SIMPLE MAIL ADDRESSING
---------------------------------------------------------

    Following completion of the initial production CREN White Pages
software, CREN plans to proceed immediately to develop mail-server
software to allow each participating organization to accept mail for all
of its faculty, staff, and students at a single organizational host
address and route it to the proper username and host, using the
organizational White Pages Information for that purpose.  The goal is to
have operational server software ready for distribution to CREN members
by July 1994.  This software should be developed through the cooperative
efforts of CREN staff and the CREN White Pages Working Group if
feasible, or through other consulting or cooperative arrangements.  The
software should be written to run on multiple platforms and should be
designed to handle Internet and BITNET mail with proper headers (but not
NJE Class M files without BSMTP headers and envelope).


APPENDIX: SAMPLE WHITE-PAGES INFORMATION
----------------------------------------

    The following provides an initial cut at the information which the
white pages directory in an organization might include, perhaps starting
out with only the minimal name and electronic address, and eventually
expanding to include additional information useful professionally
outside the organization as well as within, and possibly the information
useful within the organization but unlikely to be made available outside
it.

White-Pages Information: People in Organizations
* Minimal (Initial)
    * Organization Identification
    * Individual's Name
    * Individual's Electronic Address
* Additional -- Organizational-Professional
    * Office Phone, Postal Address
    * Professional Duties, Organizations, Interests
    * . . .
* Additional -- Supplemental, Limited-Distribution
    * Home Phone, Postal Address, E-Address
    * Family Members' Names, . . .
    * . . .

Availability and Usage Modifiers for Each Information Element
* Availability
    * Organizational Sub-Unit Only
    * Organization Only
    * Named Entities Only
    * Combinations of the Above
    * General (Everyone)
    * Individual Only -- "No" List Generation
* Usage
    * List Generation
        * By Named Entities Only
        * For Meeting Announcements Only
        * For Professional Announcements Only
        * For Any Non-Commercial Use
        * For Commercial Advertisements
        * Combinations of the Above

White Pages Example
     Data Element                        Availability         Use
Org:          US; NJ; CREN; BITNIC         General
Name:         Jim Conklin                  General
E-Addr:       CONKLIN@BITNIC               General          No-List
E-Addr2:      JBC@BITNIC                   N-List-1          List
. . .
Off Ph:       +1 202 872-4200              General          No-List
Off Ph2:      +1 202 331-5367              N-List-1         No-List
Prof Int1:    BITNET                       General          No-List
Prof Int1:    BITNET                       N-List-2          List
Prof Int2:    Net. Services                General          Meeting
Prof Int3:    POP Software                 General          Prof,Adv
. . .
N-List-1: CREN Staff, CREN Board, EDUCOM, Wife, Son
N-List-2: BITNIC, EARN-NIC, CAREN-NIC, . . .
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU