JISC Services Case Study - UK Access Management Federation
Swansea College with the support of the UK Access Management Federation implemented a Shibboleth software solution to provide a single solution to access to digital and online resources.
Making the change
‘The training and networking offered by JISC was excellent, up-to-date and relevant to our needs.’ The UK Access Management Federation provided invaluable help, advice and support to Swansea college IT services department when implementing Shibboleth on Windows onto the college server. JISC projects also provided some funding which was used to support IT staff development, build partnerships with external organisations and increase the knowledge and awareness of IT staff to the issues involved.
The external networks offered by JISC have also been used extensively to keep up-to-date with developments, communicate with partners and resolve issues. When issues arise and are posted the community are quick to respond and the IT staff have found this extremely useful during the implementation of Shibboleth.
About UK Access Management Federation
UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research, which is supported by JISC and Becta, and operated by JANET(UK), provides a single solution to access online resources and services for education and research. provides a single, one-stop-shop, solution to the access of online resources and services for education and research. Access to the resources is via the Shibboleth System which is a standards based, open source software package for web single sign-on across or within organisational boundaries.
A wide range Shibboleth-protected resources can be accessed by students and staff using their institutional username and password. By allowing users to authenticate at their home institution, the new system opens up a range of other access management options not available until now, such as:
- The same username and password for internal and external access to resources
- Reduced administration of user accounts within institutional libraries
- The ability for institutions to collaborate more effectively by allowing access to certain resources
Challenge
In 2007 the college was informed that the free ATHENS service was being discontinued and would be chargeable. They needed to look for alternatives and had become aware of Shibboleth and IdP servers as part of a previous JISC funded project in 2005/6. After further investigation it was decided to implement Shibboleth on Windows and further information was gathered from JISC and JANET. JISC made the IT manager aware of various alternatives and one of those was a project to document the installation of Shibboleth from a CD and a number of colleges in England were involved.
The main challenge the IT staff faced was to get the system up and running by August 2008 and in order to do this it was important to understand the issues involved and also work in partnership with others to find the best solution.
Solution
The college solution to the problem was to join the UK Access Management Federation and implement an IdP server. They signed up for the JISC project to implement Shibboleth from CD and this was completed successfully and also generated some income which paid for staff development. They also sent technical staff to a JANET training course on the implementation of IdP servers and Shibboleth. As part of this they signed up to an unfunded JANET project with Kidderminster College and this provided invaluable service in helping them implement the system at Swansea college.
The virtual networks offered by JISC were extremely useful. They were able to post up issues on the bulletin board and get answers almost immediately. The IT staff also attended few face-to-face meetings in Bristol and found these extremely useful.
Impact on the learning provider
The college IT staff are now in control of the delivery of the service and this is very cost effective. It has become one of the central services provided by the IT department.
There were some concerns regarding an external solution accessing the college network and active directory. However, at the end of the project these proved unfounded and the systems worked well.
The college has also benefited by the up-skilling of their IT staff and they are now able to manage and upgrade the systems in-house.
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‘Due to the specialist nature JISC provided invaluable information and advice that was not available from any other organisation.’
Ian Stewart (Computer services manager) |
Impact on the learner
The learners were already using Athens in the learning resource centre and library. The changeover to Shibboleth went extremely smoothly as the UK Access Management Federation provided the required data sets before the end of the Athens contract.
Although the learners have noticed changes in the active desk top they have not really noticed the change over as there has been no disruption in service.
Key messages
- Due to the specialist nature JISC provided invaluable information and advice that was not available from any other organisation
- The training and networking offered by JISC was excellent, up-to-date and relevant to the needs of the provider
- Using the JISC and JANET projects kick-started the Shibboleth project at the college and enabled the IT staff to gain the necessary skills to join the UK Access Management Federation
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‘The federation’s objective is to provide users in the education sectors with access to a wide range of digital resources without the need for separately identifying themselves at each location. This ambitious aspiration will require us to solve some complex issues among resource suppliers and user organisations which, if we succeed, will provide a beacon for other communities both within the UK and internationally. The federation Board and I look forward to the challenge.’
Professor Rosner (Access Management Federation chair) |
Further information
UK Access Management Federation
Swansea College