Mark writes:
Second part of our Institutional Support process, for Universities and Colleges seeking support to help set them up as IdPs, went out today. We know its not going to be a magic bullet to cure all issues that Institutions are having but like the best DNA treatments these days, it is tightly targetted. Traditionally, we (JISC) have been very good at getting historically early adopter institutions to, and you’ve guessed it - “early adopt”. The support model we are trying here goes beyond that. I sense (and please contact me if I’m wrong) that alot of FE institutions are fence sitting regards Access Management. Hopefully the institutions that get help through JIAMSP will really highlight the fact that Federated Access Mangement is both obtainable and desirable for all - and worth coming down off the fence for. We also know how small the window of opportunity is to get large scale IT projects done within the College academic calender, so another part of the support is an attempt to target by time - Institutions can choose slots as to when they would like to move forward, if they are applying for support. Questions (and with this kind of support modal, there really should be some) please.

Mark writes:

JISC has just issued an ITT for third parties experienced in access management to bid to provide support to institutions who want to deploy a IdP. You might say that such support is already there, and to a degree much of it is. Particulary if you are an Institution employing an IT staff with the correct skill set, have an organised directory service, a significant subscription to JISC Collections resources and the strategic ambition to move forward on access management. However, and it is a big HOWEVER, its clear that there are enough institutions who can use the business case toolkit to determine that they want access management (and I mean the 100% proof type, not devolved outsourcing to a delegated authority), but who have also determined that its currently financially / technically out of reach. It is that group of institutions, which the successfull respondent to the ITT will be working with. The time will come for such institutions to submit applications for the help that the project will provide, but for the present - if you are a third party provider of access management support, with a desire to spend long hours setting up IdPs in grateful institutions all over the country - we want YOUR interest. And remember we encourage questions……

We all know the trick to getting the best fastest piece of IT kit for your buck. -Locating the speed bottle neck. Its no use buying a hyper fast graphics card, if the speed of onboard memory is too slow, or having a fast shooting Digital SLR Camera if the compact flash card has a slow write speed. Well its the same with access management. So much of what we do in improving access to content depends on every link in the chain. One element which we tend to look at least (maybe because it doesn’t have a technical standard linked to it?) is licensing.

24/7, remote, finely grained access to content only happens when the license permits it too.

Lets not forget we need 21st century licenses for 21st century technology.

Tags: jisc-serv-am-briefing

While at the Janet UK Federation briefing event yesterday, someone sitting next to me asked me if I was a content supplier. Working in HE, that doesn’t happen to me very often – turned out it was all because of my laptop. I had a reasonably flash one, so I must be in commerce not education…… Moral of the story – sadly, all too often Librarians seem to be towards the bottom of the food chain when it comes to getting shiny toys. It’s important because it can be the shiny toys that inspire us to be ambitious in how we use IT. Could a particular institutions reluctance to adopt sophisticated access management be routed in a child-hood laptop deprivation of never having seen a dual core processor in action?

While on the topic of righting misconceptions, I’ve noticed the odd supplier using the JISC HE / FE banding as their pricing structure. Nothing wrong in that, however, care needs to be taken too not imply the pricing structure of a particular product is set by JISC- suppliers are welcome to use the structure, but it shouldn’t be implied that use of the structure means defacto JISC endorsement.

This event on Web 2.0 technologies and their use for outreach work, organised by JISC for JISC staff with a communication role (JISC Services Upskilling - Exploiting Communication Channels, 5 Sept, Oxford) did not have a specific focus on access management, but it did highlight the importance of good access management for a world where the number of web applications and tools used by individuals and institutions is growing at an unprecedented rate, while users increasingly expect 24/7 seamless and secure access to a wide range of technologies and applications.

The event covered a range of Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, blogs, podcasting and RSS, as well as some more ‘traditional’ communication tools, such as print and online newsletters and mailing lists.

I thought the choice of speakers was very good. I was particularly impressed by Brian Kelly’s presentation, giving an overview of Web 2.0 technologies and giving (lots of) reasons for using them in dissemination work.

Some recent research funded by JISC has highlighted the importance of embracing Web 2.0 technologies by universities. 84 % of respondents agreed with the statement that they ‘like to keep up-to-date with new technology and use it as much as possible both for study and in my free time’.

It is good to know that a number of web 2.0 technologies have already adopted federated access management, such as Twiki, Dspace etc.

The JISC now provide Shibboleth access to JISCmail. (It was fun to see a virtual JISCmail office with a Shibboleth logo on its front during a demonstration of Second Life by Simon Bignell of the University of Derby). JISC are currently working towards providing federated access to the JISC blogs (work in progress).

Tags: skillsday2007

Just watched the Australian Federation (Introduction to AAF federated access management) remake of the JISC Introduction to Federated Access Management animation.

Glad to say that it seemed more like a shot by shot remake, in the same way that Gus Van Sant remade Psycho, rather than the “re-envisioning” of Planet of the Apes that Tim Burton did.

There is a serious point though, a major rational for Federating around the SAML standard – is interoperability. The Oz remake (the country, not one featuring CGI flying monkeys), proves that we face similar problems and that we would seem to be on the right track with similar solutions.

Certainly makes the sentence, “an international standard”, far more meaningful….

I spent a very interesting day at the ‘McShib’ event in Edinburgh last Wednesday. ‘McShib’ is a group that has come together to allow people with an interest in the adoption of Shibboleth to have a local (and nothern) focus. The first great thing about this event is that it was brought together because of community demand and through the hard work of Andy Swiffin and the RSC for Scotland North and East, rather than something driven by JISC itself. The second great thing was the enthusiasm at the event and the really practical focus of the presentations on adopting Shibboleth on a very practical basis. The event was initially scoped out for about 15 people and registration closed with over 50 attendees!

One of the key messages from the day was the importance of kicking off the legal part of joining the Federation. To quote Andy Swiffin:

There is no cost involved in doing this and even if you subsequently decide to outsource your identity provision your institution will still need to join. The great benefit in doing this as soon as possible is that when you do want to actively participate all of the paperwork is in place. In addition, if as many institutions as possible join now it sends a very clear message to Service Providers that this is something that the UK academic community is serious about and that its worth their while to put some effort in making their application Shibboleth aware. This in turn benefits us all!

I couldn’t agree more! Thanks to Andy, the RSC and all who took part in a very interesting event!

Gave a presentation at the JISC RSC NW in Blackpool last week.

I recently enjoyed attending the UK Serials Group conference in Warwick. This was a good opportunity to meet with a variety of publishers and institutions to discuss the impact of JISC’s approach to federated access management. My two sessions were well attended, and a UKSG blog report is available.

I was pleased to hear T Scott Plutchak discuss the importance of librarians ‘connecting people to knowledge’ in his plenary speech - echoing the JISC middleware campaign for ‘connecting people to resources’. This highlighted the importance of the role of both technology and skilled staff in meeting the needs of our users.

The number of sessions on ‘people’ identifiers was also very notable. I’ve been aware for some time that this is an area that we really need to start focusing on at JISC. Helen Henderson of Ringgold Ltd described a project looking at the use of institutional identifiers in the journal supply chain, reminding me of the Institutional Profiling study carried out by JISC in 2003. Perhaps it is time for us to revisit this study? I was also very interested in Daniel van Spanje’s presentation on DAI: Digital Author Identifiers - something that may well come up at the JISC Repositories Conference.

It was good to see a significant update to the UKSG website, and the introduction of the UKSG blog. This reflected the other major theme of the conference - the importance of web 2.0 and its impact on librarians and publishers. Look out for Stephen Abram’s excellent presentation on library 2.0 when it is posted. Stephen gave some interesting examples of how librarians are supporting users in their own virtual environments - through blogs, face book, second life and other applications - and challenged the audience to be ready for demand for these approaches. He also described a training programme for librarians covering 23 web 2.0 things covering everything from uploading digital photos to using and managing rss feeds.

Jane and I recently attended the TERENA tf-emc2 meeting in Florence. The purpose of this task force is to provide an opportunity for collaboration and discussion between those leading access management and middleware agendas across Europe - and it is a fantastic opportunity to get a reality check on the federated access management developments within the UK. Many of the same issues are being addressed by all of the members of the task force, and the event provided a good opportunity to learn more about some impressive developments. A few of the highlights were…

• Report on SCS developments. The UK is already benefiting from this very effective initiative and JANET connected organisations can now apply for free server certificates from UKERNA.
• Discussions on the applicability of Open-ID and CardSpace to national Federations. Bob Morgan’s presentation and lead in discussion provided some valuable insights that we will be feeding in to JISC development work.
• SCHAC work on defining common schemas across Europe and examining shared definitions of schema terms.

Definitions for schema terms have been discussed at many symposia in the UK recently. A JISC Licensing workshop in December highlighted the concerns of library staff over the use of generic terms such as ‘member’ and ’staff’ within licensing terms, and the extent to which these covered visiting professors, casual staff and other users with temporary or peripheral status as a member of the institution.

Further discussion of shared definition of these terms is likely to provoke some interesting debate, and it is important that we take this forward a way that enables access where it is permitted rather than as a restricting activity.