A new way to bridge the digital divide
for K-12, libraries, and museums

Regional and state-wide organizations working to provide eduroam for their K-12, library and museum constituents.

Quick Facts about eduroam Support Organizations

• Purpose: to more-quickly scale eduroam to underserved communities; specifically K-12, libraries, and museums.
• How? By enlisting regional and state-wide networks with existing relationships with these communities.
• When? Internet2 will announce the next cohort of Support Organizations in late December.
• Then what? InCommon will provide a simplified business model and training to the Support Organizations. Support organizations will provision new service for their constituents and provide first-level support.

Expanding eduroam to additional communities

The true value of eduroam increases with its ubiquity. eduroam in every primary and secondary educational institution, library, and public space boosts the value proposition of the service immensely and regional networks and community anchor institutions present a unique and powerful partner to address this scaling issue. At the same time, we help make community services, and the community that provides them, more sticky. K12s as well as libraries and museums that are part of the K12 ecosystem have thus far been underserved by eduroam in the US. eduroam Support Organizations (SOs) are tasked with leveraging their existing relationships with K12s, libraries, and museums to address this need. 

Simplified business model for eduroam Support Organizations

To better enable eduroam Support Organizations to serve these communities, this program provides them with a simplified business model, training and resources to build the expertise of their staff, and ongoing support. 

Key responsibilities of Support Organizations include:

• Provisioning service for new K12, library, and museum constituents
• Ongoing first level support for constituents
• Providing an inventory of constituents
• Participate in collaborative meetings with other program participants. Discuss feedback, requests, program ideas with the Support Organization community 

Features

The features regarding eduroam Support Organizations fall into three categories. 

Simplified contracting and fee structure

• Flat fee structure, determined per state
• Unlimited K-12, museum and library Identity Provider (eduroam accounts) deployments 
• Unlimited eduroam Hot Spots/Access Points 
• Support Organization staff access to eduroam fee is waived

Support of your organization during the program’s ramp-up

• One on-site Support Organization staff training and roll-out consulting
• One 2-day connector training on-site
• Intensive roll-out support for six months and Program Update/training on-going
• Work with previous adopters to avoid pitfalls and get going more quickly

Ongoing resources to enable continued success

• 36 hours of Support Organization technical support annually
• Collaboration design enables sharing of lessons learned, documentation and other resources
• Documentation, training and marketing materials that can be customized for delivery to K-12, museums, and libraries
• Regular meetings for participating Support Organizations to discuss program and service
• On-going training and service evolution feedback and engagement through eduroam Advisory Committee
• Option to purchase additional in-person training for staff or constituent community