Showcase delegates hear about Jisc's access management plans
The move to federated access management is ‘an essential part of Jisc’s work’, said Sarah Porter, Jisc’s Head of Development, at the start of the Access Management showcase event held in central London yesterday. Delivering the keynote address at the event, which attracted around 150 senior IT managers, publishers and other delegates, she said the UK Access Management Federation, due to be launched in November, will support educational institutions to implement new technologies, such as Shibboleth, which will allow single sign-on to resources for users through the implementation of federated, devolved authentication.
Outlining why such technologies were needed, she suggested that federated access management – in which institutions take greater control of access management procedures - offered a number of advantages, including the support of more complex and dynamic collaborations in e-research and e-learning, access to third party e-resources and the increasing adoption of such technologies internationally. In addition, with DfES and HEFCE strategies emphasising the importance of links between sectors, there was the need to work with partners such as Becta and the NHS to support a coordinated approach to access management across all education and other sectors.
While ‘institutional effort is needed to make the necessary changes’, said Sarah, institutions had choices, choices that should be informed by institutional requirements. She outlined the various means of support which Jisc is funding to support institutions in making these far-reaching changes, including early adopter projects and the Middleware Assisted Take-Up service (MATU).
The early adopter projects played an important role in the day-long event, providing a range of speakers, and with project members answering delegates’ questions in an exhibition area during the breaks.
Publishers too were well-represented at the showcase event. Ale de Vries of Elsevier spoke of a 2004 pilot project which implemented Shibboleth technology and which came up with ‘no major problems’, he reported, but many benefits. Calling on publishers and service providers to embrace the new technologies, he said: ‘Your customers will be asking for them if they haven’t already’. He went on to praise Jisc for its close work with publishers and service providers in this area and for its support for institutions.
A final plenary session was addressed by Henry Hughes of UKERNA which will host the UK Federation on behalf of Jisc and Becta, and which will be available to join in November of this year. He suggested that institutions interested in joining the UK Federation should join the development SDSS Federation now. The two will have similar technical requirements, he suggested, and the transition between them is intended to be straightforward. The work involved in joining the SDSS Federation will not have to be repeated when the transition to the UK Federation takes place at the end of this year.
The showcase event was the first in a series of events being held around the country to prepare the UK education community for the launch of the UK Access Management Federation.