Saw some numbers concerning Federation membership being bandied around in an IWR article. Once the reader has got past some of the inconsistencies of the piece (such as the headline writer making the mistake of considering the Federation and Shibboleth as synonymous), the message that perhaps should be drawn out of the piece is one of JISC commitment to technical open standards, and general “openness”.

One of the benefits of a JISC approach combined with an open standards approach is that all of the information concerning the Federation is public and open – This includes TWO Institutional preparedness studies which are now available in full on the web (which incidentally cover a much larger sample than the survey sited in the IWR piece) and details of membership of the federation (Institutions and Service Providers) are freely available for all to see on the Federation website. UK HE / FE is a very complex and heterogeneous environment- where “one solution” certainly does not fit all. Different strokes for different folks means the future of access management is certainly not a zero-sum game, where there can only be one choice or winner, but one of an eclectic range of provision and solutions.

JISC championing of an open standards approach, public availability of surveys and development of the Athens Shibboleth Gateways demonstrates an awareness of the need for institutions to have real choices regarding access management, based on their own individual circumstances.