How does an institution actually acquire certificates?
InCommon operates the Registration Authority, leveraging its current processes for verifying organizations and identity proofing officials authorized to act on behalf of an institution for certificate issuance. These individuals may be the same or different than the current InCommon administrators. It is expected that at each institution a small number of people (typically two or three) will be authorized to manage the overall institutional certificate program. Once an institution authorizes individuals, they will deal directly with the Comodo CA (via either a GUI or API) for requesting individual certificates. InCommon is, by design, not in the path of certificate issuance or revocation (or even in the path of authorizing second-level personnel), only the vetting of the top-level certificate program administrators and the domains they are authorized to administer.
