UK Access Management Federation reports rapid growth as deadline approaches

Education and research sectors have until 31 July to decide on future access to learning materials.

The UK Access Management Federation has reported rapid growth as the deadline approaches for the further education and higher education sectors and the publishing industry to decide on future access to learning materials.

Education institutions and publishers have until July 31st 2008 to join the Federation. Joining the Federation offers members the option to transition to new open standard access management systems that are SAML compliant, such as Shibboleth.

Membership of the UK Access Management Federation now exceeds 380, with organisations including the BBC, Microsoft, The Royal College of Surgeons of England and Thomson Scientific having joined.

The Federation is operated by JANET (UK) on behalf of Jisc and Becta and brings the entire UK education and research sector a step closer to achieving single sign-on to network and online resources.

In the past two months, membership of the Access Management Federation has risen dramatically as educational institutions and service providers move to take advantage of the numerous benefits of joining, including easier compliance with regulatory requirements, improved service to users, reduced support requirements and improved data security.

According to Mark Williams, access management outreach coordinator with Jisc, "We are pleased that so many universities, colleges and service providers have elected to join the Access Management Federation. To date, over 80 per cent of higher and 33 per cent of further education institutions have joined.

"It’s important those yet to become members are aware they have until July 31st to do so or risk losing external access to Jisc collections."

Joining the Access Management Federation is a simple process that can result in significant cost savings related to access management.

Further information on the UK Federation