Supported by the Australian Government
through the Department of Innovation,
Industry, Science and Research
THE AUSTRALIAN ACCESS FEDERATION
Bradley Beddoes:
Accelerated Technical Development Lead
IBS Phenomics Data and Informatics Workshop - April 2010
© Australian Access Federation Inc.
OVERVIEW
The Australian Access Federation (AAF) provides a
production framework and support infrastructure to facilitate
trusted electronic communications and collaboration within
and between universities and research institutions in
Australia and overseas.
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
AAF PROJECT STAFF
Project Manager
Heath Marks
Griffith University
Technical Program Manager
Terry Smith
QUT
Accelerated Technical
Development Lead
Bradley Beddoes
QUT
Change and Communication
Manager
Glenys Kranz
Griffith University
Snr. Graphic Designer/Web
Developer
Steven Beagley
QUT
Policy, Process and Strategy
Patricia McMillan
University of Queensland
Technical Support
Damien Mannix
VeRSI
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
INTERIM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
President
Paul Sherlock
UniSA
Vice President
Vacant
Vacant
Treasurer
David Toll
CSIRO
Secretary
Bruce Callow
Griffith University
Public Officer AAF Inc.
Richard Northam
CAUDIT
Ordinary Members
Jeremy De Vu
Monash University
John Parry
UTAS
Vacant
Vacant
Garry Trinder
ECU
Anthony Williams
ARCS
Rhys Francis
NRIC
Clare McLaughlin
DIISR
Thien Tran
DIISR
Peter Nissen
CAUDIT
James Sankar
AARNet
Stephen Whiteside
University of Auckland
Co-Opt Non-Voting Members
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
WHAT IS A FEDERATION?
A federation is a group of institutions and organisations that sign up to an agreed set of
policies for exchanging information about users and resources to enable access and use of
resources and services. The federation combined with identity management software
within institutions and organisations can be referred to as federated access management.
Federated Access Management builds a trust relationship between Identity Providers (IdP)
and Service Providers (SP). It devolves the responsibility for authentication to a user’s
home institution, and establishes authorisation through the secure exchange of
information (known as attributes) between the two parties.
Source: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2006/03/access_qanda.aspx
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
INTERNATIONAL FEDERATIONS
Federation
Operational Since
# Identity
Providers
# Service
Providers
# End users
UK: UKfed
Nov 2006
751 (mix idp + sp)
3,000,000
Netherlands: SURFNet
8,500 p/week
November 2007
41
13
500,564
Spain: SIR
April 2008
27
107
600,000
Swiss: SWITCH
August 2005
41
337
260,000
Germany: DFN - AAI
November 2007
40
30
Unavailable
Denmark : WAYF
March 2008
8
5
125,000
Norway: Feide
May 2003
30
50
180,000
Finland: HAKA
3.8M logins in 2008
August 2005
30
60
264,000
France: Renater
October 2006
53
54
900,000
Greece: GRNET
January 2007
19
4
~30,000
Croatia: AAIedu
~4.2M Logins 2008
Unavailable
219
70
>530,000
USA: Incommon
Unavailable
79
140
2,200,000
THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNEY
MAMS: MELCOE
AAF: CAUDIT
Trough of
Disillusionment
AAF
Mini-grant
Scheme
begins
Plateau of Productivity
AAF Operator Appointed
Slope of Enlightenment
AAF moves to production Mode
Technology
Trigger Peak of Inflated Expectations
2011
Source: Adapted from Gartner Hype Cycle
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
THE AAF ROADMAP
FROM JUNE 2009 TO END OF 2010:
•
$2 Million DIISR Funding – 8 Key areas
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
MAMS Testbed Migration $150,000
Technical resources to assist organisations to join the AAF $300,000
Marketing and Communication $250,000
Mini-grant program $455,000
CAUDIT support $150,000
AAF Inc Operations $400,000
Foundation Members Support $150,000
Advanced Technical Developments 145,000
Focus on significantly accelerating the implementation of the AAF =
Plateau of Productivity
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
Source: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2006/03/access_qanda.aspx
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
BENEFITS OF THE AAF
FOR RESEARCHERS, STAFF AND STUDENTS
•
•
Log in using the credentials (username and password) issued by your own
institution
Provides a framework to seamlessly access a wide range of resources
internally and externally to institutions:
• data collections and data grids,
• scientific instruments, modeling and visualisation tools, and computing
resources,
• collaboration environments and workspaces for virtual teams,
• scholarly resources and publications,
• eLearning resources and learning object collections,
• national higher education and research administrative systems.
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
BENEFITS OF THE AAF (CONT’D)
FOR RESEARCHERS, STAFF AND STUDENTS
•
•
•
Only need to remember one account from the home institution
The need to disclose identity is reduced
Increased interuniversity mobility and collaboration
The AAF– will become the key framework for several Australian e-research
initiatives that rely on online collaboration.
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
BENEFITS OF THE AAF (CONT’D)
FOR SERVICE PROVIDERS
•
The AAF will enable Service Providers to provide access to services and
resources in an authorised and secure way without needing to issue
individual user accounts
•
Institutions and Service Providers agree to abide by the Federation
policies and to trust the information shared between them
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
BENEFITS OF THE AAF (CONT’D)
FOR THE INSTITUTION
•
•
•
•
•
Improved institutional identity management practices
Better service to users
Improved access services for cross institutional courses
Integrated with existing access management systems, and
Reduced identity and access support problems.
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
18 Australian University Members
(46% of Australian Universities Joined!)
3 New Zealand University Members
6 Research Organisation Members
4 Affiliates
Many more in the pipeline!
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
Intending to Joining:
• AARNet
• Australian National University
• Australian Synchrotron
• Bond University
• Curtin University
• Intersect Australia Ltd
• iVEC
• The University of Melbourne
• The University of the Sunshine Coast
• University of Newcastle
• Victorian eResearch Strategic Initiative
• Dotsec
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
WHO CAN JOIN THE AAF?
Participation in the Federation is available to organisations and institutions
which undertake or support education, research or research and development
in Australia and agree to be bound by the Federation Rules for Participants.
o Tertiary Education Institutions – universities and vocational education institutions
o Government or commercial research institutions – CSIRO, BoM, CRCs
o Not-for-profit entities supporting research or education – ARCS, Intersect
o Organisations delivering products or services to the education or research sector –
ABS, Microsoft, State Departments of Primary Industry, Elsevier
o Any other entity approved by the Executive Committee from time to time.
Participants are either Members or Affiliates.
© Australian
Australian Access
Federation
Inc.Inc.
www.aaf.edu.au
Access
Federation
www.aaf.edu.au
AAF SERVICES
WHAT SERVICES ARE PLANNED OR AVAILABLE NOW
NOW: eGrad School (ATN Universities: Curtin University of Technology,
QUT, RMIT University, University of South Australia, UTS.)
Services include:
•
Award level qualifications
•
Research Methodology Online (MORE)
•
Employability Skills Online (LEAP)
•
Information Literacy for the eResearcher
NOW: Australian Research Collaboration Services (ARCS)
•
Arcs Services
•
ARCS Data Fabric – 25GB data storage
•
Job Execution Manager (Grisu)
Affiliate Participant Services
•
•
•
•
NetSpot
Hosted Moodle solutions in the cloud
Pebble Learning
Hosted e-Portfolio solution in the cloud
RMIT Publishing
Informit on-line service for Australian scholarly publications
TALIS Information Limited
Talis Aspire – A reading list solution
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
AAF SERVICES (CONT’D)
ANDS Publish My Data
ANDS Publish My Data self-service allows Australian researchers and research
organisations to publicise the existence of research collections via the internet.
Publish My Data self-service is an ANDS online service that allows individuals to
manually enter collection description information and to obtain a persistent identifier
for the collection. This information will be stored in the ANDS Collections Registry and
will be discoverable through Research Data Australia.
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
AAF SERVICES (CONT’D)
Virtual Beam Line (VBL)
VBL allows researchers using the following Beamlines - macromolecular crystallography,
micro crystallography and powder diffraction - to see experiments on these Beamlines
from a location remote to the synchrotron.
Researchers using the VBL can collaborate using an advanced high-quality video
conferencing system and shared applications.
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
AAF SERVICE CATALOGUE
The catalogue will enable the
Federation’s End Users to
browse and connect to
Federation Enabled Services,
and will act as a key marketing
tool in the promotion
of our Participants’ services.
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au
QUESTIONS?
Visit us online www.aaf.edu.au
More Information?
enquiries@aaf.edu.au
© Australian Access Federation Inc. www.aaf.edu.au