News

Dear EDI user,

You may have read in our October 2019 EDI News that we will be releasing an updated authentication interface on the EDI Data Portal. In conjunction with this release, we have adopted a new Privacy Policy statement that provides you with critical information regarding the data we collect about you and your rights pertaining to that data. As part of this roll-out, we ask that you acknowledge our Privacy Policy by accepting it when prompted during login. This is a “one-time” process* and covers your use of any EDI managed resources, including the EDI data repository, Data Portal, and project website, and on any of our tiered systems (production, staging, or development). If, however, you decline to accept our Privacy Policy, you will not be allowed to operate as an authenticated user on EDI’s resources; you may proceed to access all “public” content as an anonymous user in this state. We believe it is important that transparency exists when it comes to collecting and processing personal data, especially as we provide additional means for self-identification. If you have any comments or concerns about our Privacy Policy, please send them to support@environmentaldatainitiative.org. Thank you.

*Revisions or modifications to our Privacy Policy may require another acknowledgement acceptance.

Sincerely,
The Environmental Data Initiative

The EDI technical team is excited to begin a new phase in our user identity and authentication processing capabilities for the EDI data portal. Beginning this November, users will have the opportunity to identify themselves through 3rd-party identity service providers, including Google, GitHub, and ORCID, by using the OAuth/OpenID Connect protocols these organizations support. Users who login through one of these providers will eventually (late this year) be able to register their email address for data package tracking and notifications – a valuable feature to alert users of updates for data packages that they are following, such as if a new revision of a data package is added to the data repository or if a data package is found to contain erroneous or misleading data. These logins will not, however, replace the current EDI or LTER LDAP user accounts, which are still required to upload data packages and access certain tools from the EDI Data Portal. Following email registration, we will add “identity mapping” as another new feature so that you may link together identities, including those from the EDI and LTER LDAP accounts, to use whichever identity is most convenient for you. Look for identity mapping early next year.