JISC

Summary

The SMART (Student-Managed Access to Online Resources) Deployment project extends the developed state-of-the-art UMA (User-Managed Access) software with federated identity management capabilities, pilots the system within Newcastle University and integrates it with UK Federation. UMA, as a newly emerging technology, has been of much interest to various academic and commercial organisations within and outside UK and has been recently widely discussed in the AIM community. The UMA protocol is being standardized by the User-Managed Access Working Group. The proposed project builds on the outcomes of two previous successful projects SMARTv1 and SMARTv2 funded by JISC as well as current research by the investigators. Through this work we make existing state-of-the-art access management software more usable by extending it with federated identity management functionality, thus allowing flexible and fine-grained data sharing between organisations. We also embed this software within an academic institution and integrate it with UK federation to provide the community within the UK with better generic tools to share data across organisational boundaries. In this manner we ensure that HE institutions have access to emerging technologies and we further expose these technologies to the HE and AIM communities.

Objectives

In SMARTD we aim to leverage our already conducted research on User-Managed Access and development of associated software, namely SMART AM and the UMA/j framework. Our goal is to further extend this software and deploy it within an academic institution to prove its applicability to academic environments. Through integration with an existing Web application at Newcastle University, we aim to further enhance the software and make it more usable for the benefit of the research community at Newcastle University. By integrating the software with UK federation and making the API of SMART AM publicly available, we aim to further engage with the HE and AIM communities in the UK.

Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes

Following are the primary outcomes of the project:

• Implementation of the software extension layer for SMART AM to support federated identity management
• Pilot deployment of SMART Authorization Manager at Newcastle University and integration with an existing Web application for researchers
• Implementation of the integration layer for SMART AM for UK federation along with making the API of SMART AM publicly available for other academic institutions to use
• Case study document of embedding of the state-of-the-art access management software within an academic institution.