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Australian Access Federation Newsletter – Issue 1
AAF Technical Program Manager Presents at TERENA2010 Conference
Held in Lithuania from 31 May to 3 June, the TERENA (Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association) 2010 Conference is Europe’s largest and most prestigious research networking conference for research organisations, universities, worldwide sister institutions and industry representatives.
The AAF Technical Program Manager, Terry Smith, presented a paper at the TERENA Conference on “Privacy and the Australian Access Federation”. The presentation dealt with the implications of the Australian Privacy Act and what the AAF is planning to do to meet those requirements especially with respect to the current state of the art of user consent for attribute release.
The four day conference also provided information and useful discussion on the way forward for international federations which may also have an impact on the AAF, as well as providing networking opportunities with federation colleagues.
It was interesting to see that the focus for federations in the northern hemisphere was changing. The big push in Europe, the UK and USA has been the simple and consistent access to services – in general, library content services, access to technical journals etc. Although this still appears to be the main driver, a number of federations are now keen to explore collaboration opportunities and to get researchers involved. This is in contrast to the AAF model. From the very beginning, the main driver for the AAF has been to provide access to resources to support collaboration between users within the Australian research and higher education communities.
There was talk about the possible establishment of a global inter-federation organisation, although this seems unlikely in the short term given the issues still to be sorted through. However, the federation template appears to be the way of the future as more countries actively start-up their own federation eg Canada, Japan and Korea, with SAML2 being the standard.
It was encouraging to see that there was a high awareness of the AAF generally and some of the participants were keen to show their support by wearing the AAF polo shirt – from left are: Victoriano Giralt, University of Malaga; Brook Schofield, TERENA; Licia Florio, TERENA; Diego Lopez, RedIRIS; Klaas Wierenga, Cisco Systems.
Using the AAF to Access ARCS Services
Phase 1 of the new ARCS website has been launched and allows users to discover information and services provided by the Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS) aimed at promoting and enabling effective collaboration by Australian researchers.
Members of trusted research communities and organisations are now able to use their institutional ID and password to access ARCS services and tools quickly and securely through the Australian Access Federation (AAF).
To register for ARCS services, go to the ARCS website and click on the “Services Login” button. Log in using your home institution credentials, agree to usage terms and conditions, take note of your ARCS username and select a password for your ARCS user account, and then view and access services offered.
Your ARCS user account is used to bridge the gap between the AAF and services provided by ARCS. Your ARCS account is linked to your AAF account through your Shared Token, a persistent, unique identifier provided by your home institution for use by ARCS services.
Your Shared Token is intended to be portable. If you change institutions (Identity Provider) you should migrate your Shared Token to enable seamless access to ARCS services. Users can download a “Shared Token Ownership Statement” by clicking on the “signed PDF” link on the “Your Account” page. This should be provided to the new institutional account administrator with a request to set your Shared Token value.
Find out more information about ARCS’ services.
Neil Witheridge, ARCS Authorisation Services Manager
Round 3 Mini-grant Recipients
The AAF Mini-grant Scheme was initiated to assist current and potential Service Providers with the deployment of their service to the AAF. Although now closed, we are happy to report that the Mini-grant Scheme is meeting this objective with work well and truly underway on the projects which were successful in their bid for a mini-grant.
Round 3 applications have also been finalised. Five Mini-grants were approved by the Selection Committee to receive a grant of up to $40,000 for their nominated project.
