JISC Announces the Development of a New Access Management System for the UK
Over the past few years, JISC has invested significant resources in the development of the next generation of access management technologies through its Core Middleware programmes. We are now implementing a major initiative which will affect our funding of Athens, which will require institutions to make choices and decisions.
On Tuesday 28 February 2006, all Higher Education Vice Chancellors and Principals in Further Education in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, along with publishers, received a letter from JISC which detailed the changes.
Connecting students and staff to the valuable resources subscribed to by UK educational institutions is essential to the sector. JISC has made this possible by funding the Athens service to provide usernames and passwords to users within UK education, putting us ahead of the rest of the world in providing a consistent and uniform access mechanism to a wide range of online content.
To maintain its leading-edge status, JISC is devoting significant funds to and collaborating internationally on, the development and implementation of the next generation access-management system based on the Shibboleth technology. To find out more about the Shibboleth technology, go to the Shibboleth page.
Benefits of the new system will include:
- Easier access to online resources for users
- Enhanced opportunities for collaboration
- Facilitation of national e-strategies
In November 2006, JISC launched its UK Access Management Federation for UK higher (HE) and further (FE) education institutions. Educational institutions throughout the UK are invited to join the UK federation and adopt new technology, such as Shibboleth. This will provide institutions with a route to single sign-on to resources for users through the implementation of federated, devolved authentication.
The JISC funding for the Athens service ceased on 31 July 2008.
JISC has produced roadmaps for institutions and publishers to clearly outline the choices that they have to make: these were sent with the letters and can be viewed at the foot of this page as attachments.
JISC has also be providing the community with support in the form of bulletins, events, training and early-adopter funding over the transition period.
Information and experts have also be available at various events (see the Events page).
Below are copies of the letters sent to Institutions and Publishers, the briefing paper introducing Shibboleth and JISC guidelines for Education Institutions, Publishers and Service providers detailing the choices available and timescales for the transition programme.