JISC

At the beginning of the academic year plans were well under way for the transition to federated access management, and the UK Access Management Federation was announcing that colleges, universities, local authorities, Regional Broadband Consortia and service providers were rapidly joining the Federation, or preparing to join.

JISC’s transition programme reached its first major milestone in August 2007 when it was announced that Brunel University had become the 100^th member of the UK Access Management Federation Formal acceptance of its application meant that Brunel was now bound by the terms of membership of the Federation, terms which established a way of exchanging information between individuals and providers of digital resources, protecting the security of both the individual and the resource concerned.

The Federation operated by JANET(UK) on behalf of JISC and Becta represents the centrepiece of JISC and Becta’s significant investment in federated access management as a means of supporting more flexible and more secure access to online resources of all kinds. Malcolm Emmett, Assistant Director of Library Services at Brunel University, welcomed his institution’s membership of the Federation, saying: ‘Seamless access to our electronic resources is essential for today’s student, whenever and wherever they need it. We are excited by the advantages that joining the Federation offers and the benefits that increased collaboration with other institutions will bring.’

Membership of the UK Access Management Federation reaches a landmark 
(Duration 7:42)
 

A sign that the challenges of supporting more complex research and e-learning collaborations are international ones was provided in October by a newly-launched Australian animation which signalled that there were clear parallels between the Australian experience and the challenges being tackled in the UK. The animation, by the Australian Access Federation, took its cue from that created by the UK Access Management Federation, released earlier in the year, which also explained the basis for radical developments in the area of access management. The original JISC animation, published under a Creative Commons license, was able to be repurposed for educational purposes and was also translated into Spanish and Italian.

Service provider adoption of federated access management was championed by Elsevier Science Direct, one of the early adopters of federated access management. Elsevier saw many benefits to joining the Federation, including the economies of using the same internationally recognised standard-based technology in other countries and users accessing more of their content through secure single sign-on.

Podcast interview Elsevier’s adoption of federated access management
(Duration: 16:34)

Another milestone was reached in February of this year when it was announced that Abingdon and Witney College had become the 200^th member of the UK Access Management Federation and that the membership of the Federation had doubled in under six months. Commenting on their decision to become a member, Christine Brown from Abingdon and Witney College said: ‘I am delighted that Abingdon and Witney College is the 200th member to join. I am sure this will prove to be a fruitful partnership with many tangible benefits for the college.’

In March, JISC provided additional support to smaller publishers through its Publisher Access Management Support project. JISC had identified that smaller publishers which make up approximately half of all academic publishers lacked the resource and skills set to move to a federated access management solution by themselves. The project therefore provided direct consultancy support and advice to enable smaller publishers to join the Federation. The project worked closely with Netskills, which extended its training programme to include Service Provider workshops, and a final report based on the experiences of the publishers was published in August.

By May membership of the Federation had reached nearly 400, augmented by the joining of service providers, publishers and organisations such as the BBC, Microsoft, The Royal College of Surgeons of England and Thomson Scientific.

Also in May, a major and highly successful event was held jointly with SCONUL which provided an overview of progress made so far and an opportunity to discuss current challenges and solutions to managing access to e-resources. Among the subjects under discussion were the potential for further work to support access to e-resources for visitors to institutions and the options available to institutions to ensure access to e-resources in the future.

Listen to Masha Garibyan’s podcast recorded at the event
Towards the future with federated access management (Duration: 9:06)

JISC services played a crucial role in ensuring that institutions received the level of support and guidance they needed in making far-reaching changes to their access management services. The JISC Regional Support Centres provided a wide range of regular forums for interested parties to meet experts, share information and in many cases provide the opportunity for cross fertilisation between FE and HE institutions.

Netskills too provided a UK-wide programme of training events to help institutions as they join the UK Access Management Federation. Their three-day workshop - Federated Access Management: Core Skills - developed with JISC funding, focused on the practical requirements for organisations joining the federation and acting as their own Identity Provider (IdP). Guest speakers at each event provide an opportunity to find out how others are already working with federated access management too.

By the deadline for transition of July 31st it was announced that nearly 500 institutions and organisations had completed the transition to a new open standard compliant access management system and membership of the UK Access Management Federation, including 90% of HE institutions and nearly half of FE institutions. This represented an overall membership of approximately 8 million users across the UK, bringing the entire UK education and research sector a step closer to achieving single sign-on to network and online resources.

Ongoing support arrangements were also confirmed, in particular, that the UK Access Management Federation would provide the first port-of-call through the JANET helpdesk. Training is also being made available through both JANET and Netskills, as well as through events organised by Regional Support Centres across the country. JISC also confirmed that funding for a further three years will be provided for Service Provider support, continuing the work of the Access Management Team and JISC Collections to bring publishers and other service providers into the UK Access Management Federation.