1. International Task Force Meeting
Internet2 meeting, 8 October 2007, San Diego
Jane Charlton, JISC
I work for JISC, one of the two organisations that is funding the UK Access Management Federation.
Joint Information Systems Committee
Supporting education and research

2. Inter-federation policy: enabling collaboration
Jane Charlton
Access Management Outreach Co-ordinator, JISC

3. JISC
Provides world-class leadership in the innovative use of ICT to support education and research
Funded by UK further and higher education funding councils to provide:
National services (network, content, advisory)
R&D programmes and projects
Themes: network, content, e-learning, e-research, access management, information environment, e-admin, business & community engagement

4. What is an access management federation?
A group of organisations that sign up to an agreed set of policies for exchanging information about users to enable access and use of resources and services.
Trust relationship between identity providers and service providers, devolving authentication to the user’s home institution.
Authorisation – secure exchange of information through the use of attributes.
These definitions and models taken from a recent report on International Aspects of Access Management Federations by consultants Curtis + Cartwright.

6. The UK Access Management Federation
Launched November 2006
Jointly funded by JISC and Becta
Hosted by JANET (UK)
Schools, FE, HE and Research
Organisations and institutions providing services to these sectors
Policy Board and Technical Advisory Group
Provides consistency across the education sectors
Facilitates sharing of content and collaboration within and across sectors

7. Supporting the transition
Becta – schools sector
JISC – further and higher education
JISC 2 year transition programme
Access Management Outreach Team
Further and higher education
Service providers (eg. publishers)
National and international organisations
Identity providers and service providers inter-dependent on each other joining federations.

8. Supporting the transition
From Athens legacy system (centralised system) to federated access management (devolved system)
More choice and flexibility
3rd party providers
Open source or commercial
Security
Institutional readiness
Identity providers and service providers inter-dependent on each other joining federations.

10. UK Access Management Federation
Find out more about the UK Access Management Federation
Internet2 meeting, Sunset room
Tuesday 9 October, 1.15 – 2.30pm
Nicole Harris and Mark Tysom

11. International Task Force Meeting
Enabling collaboration: Current issues and International work

13. The International scene
Federations in operation: Croatia, Finland, France, Norway, Switzerland, UK, USA
Federations in development or testing: Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden
This number likely to grow…
All except Norway, Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain are Shibboleth-enabled (interoperate with Shibboleth)

14. Drivers for inter-federation policy
Service Providers currently required to join each federation because of licensing laws
Time consuming: differences in legislation and federation set-up
Not scaleable

15. Drivers for inter-federation policy
Collaboration and shared access to institutional resources
Research
Institutional repositories
Learning environments

16. Knowledge Exchange
Partnership between Denmark (DEFF), Germany (DFG), Netherlands (SURF) and UK (JISC)
Content working group
International licensing agreement funding 4 publishers
Access Management working group
JISC study on federation policy agreements

17. Terena
Terena (Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association)
A forum to collaborate, innovate and share knowledge in order to foster the development of Internet technology, infrastructure and services to be used by the research and education community.

18. Terena: 1st International Confederation Workshop
Define inter-federation models
Identify and co-ordinate use cases of major research projects that would benefit from inter-federation connections
Legal aspects - JISC study on federation policy agreements
Attributes, levels of assurance
Watching brief: eGovernment, OpenId, CardSpace

19. International Task Force Meeting
JISC study: Feasibility of a cross-jurisdiction Common Access Management Federation Agreement

20. JISC study on federation policy
Follows on from earlier study on International aspects of federated access management
JISC Legal
Project acronym
JISC Legal FACT (Feasibility of a Common Template)

21. JISC study on federation policy
Led by Mahesh Madhavan, Legal Information Specialist
Master of Laws, Australia
e-Repositories, e-collections, service agreements & templates
Managed by Jason Campbell, Service Manager
European and contract law
Supported by 2 other Legal Info Specialists, Research Assistant and Senior Librarian

22. JISC study on federation policy
Aims:
To identify common elements between federation policies and agreements and
To determine the feasibility of creating a template agreement to make it easier for publishers and service providers wishing to join multiple federations.

23. JISC study on federation policy
Intended outcomes:
If feasible, to allow the development of a template agreement for use across multiple access management federations and ultimately:
To encourage more publishers and service providers joining federations
To make access to online resources easier for users through publishers joining federations
To enable inter-federation collaboration and exchange of information
A template won’t necessarily be created as part of the study. The studies main purpose is to establish if a template policy is feasible.

24. JISC study on federation policy
Objectives:
Analyse 9 countries’ federation policy agreements and legal documentation including: the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden), France, Switzerland, Netherlands, UK, USA
Identify commonalities between federation policies and agreements
Evaluate whether a common template is possible and consider if it could be used in peering federations or confederations
Consider how a template could be updated and adapted as legislation changes and new technologies emerge

25. JISC study on federation policy
Policy differences in:
Rules and regulations of membership
Legal requirements
Data protection, privacy, IPR, liability
EU and US law
Fees for joining
No fee (Switzerland, UK and France)
Full fee (Norway and US)
Subsidised by government (Finland)

26. Countries involved in the study
Six operational federations:
Finland, France, Norway, Switzerland, UK, US
Three in test/development:
Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands
“Kalmar Union” confederation: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden
Norway and Switzerland – earliest federations
UK – potentially one of the largest federations
The Netherlands and US have other national federations

27. JISC study on federation policy
Stakeholders include:
federation staff
publishers and other service providers
relevant international organisations eg. Terena
Institutional staff from two JISC projects
Outputs will include:
Website:
final report

28. JISC study on federation policy
Timescales:
August: project plan and website in place
September: survey of federation agreements
October: analysis of common elements, frameworks and mechanisms for updating
November: draft report available
January: final report published

29. JISC study on federation policy
Further information
Website
Blog
list

30. International Task Force Meeting
Defining inter-federation models

31. Inter-federation models
Peering federation – agreement between two federations
Confederation – agreement among several federations
Leveraged federation – membership of smaller federation and also an overarching federation
Peering federation - when a federation establishes a trust relationship with one or more national or international federations through bi or multi-lateral agreements with the common purpose of allowing the secure exchange of information about users and resources
Virtual organisations are groups of users from one or more federations collaborating on a joint project to achieve a common goal.
A confederation is when a group of federations are managed by an overarching organisation which determines standards and policy, whilst individual federations retain local management.

32. Inter-federation model: PeeringUK
Federation
Bi-lateral
policy
agreement
Swiss
Federation
Difficult to scale due to multiple and divergent policies

33. Inter-federation model: Confederation
Difficult and expensive to establish, not dynamic

34. Inter-federation model: Leverage
Smaller
Federation

35. International Task Force Meeting
Identifying inter-federation use cases

36. Use case: Potential for cross-federation collaboration
Proposal for a small scale inter-federation demonstrator that will enable collaboration on a research project between UK and Australia
Focus on practical issues of peering federations
Series of use cases for researchers
Exchange of data between the two federations
More information: James Farnhill, JISC Patty McMillian, AAF

37. Why explore federation peering model?
Many federations still being set-up and uptake of membership is currently slow, therefore global confederation model unlikely in next 3 – 5 years
Easier to establish than confederation
Testing ground for confederations, particularly for establishing use cases
DPA and IPR issues could be resolved by informed consent by the user.

38. Inter-federation policy: enabling collaboration
Thank you for listening – any questions?
Jane Charlton, JISC

39. What is an attribute?
Identity information about a user
eduPersonScopedAffiliation – user’s relationship with institution
eduPersonTargetedID (r001xf4rg2ss) – persistent psuedonym for personalisation
eduPersonPrincipalName (charltonjl) – mostly used for internal services
eduPersonEntitlement (Universal Resource Identifier) – restrict access to specific groups