Autumn 2013. Big things start small. An interuniversity working group captures floating ideas around user-centric identities, puts those ideas into a roadmap and proposes a name for it: Swiss edu-ID. The resulting document becomes one cornerstone of the national strategy, approved by the Swiss University Conference in April 2014. But it also marks the beginning of SWITCH’s efforts to implement the proposed Swiss edu-ID roadmap. swissuniversities supports this collaborative effort of SWITCH and the Swiss universities including their libraries.
Autumn 2016. The pilot service Swiss edu-ID V1.0 is around for well over a year. It allowed us to gain first operational experience in numerous pilot projects and a much clearer picture of what is yet to come. We also learned that some services start to rely increasingly on the availability of Swiss edu-ID, while others care more for the latest feature. Time is ripe to give both a home.
This is why SWITCH starts to use a new, distinct branding for the operational service emerging from the Swiss edu-ID project. The new branding honors the roots by keeping “edu-ID” in its name, but it also shows its operational home, adheres to the service naming guidelines of SWITCH and receives proper legal protection. The user-centric identity management service of SWITCH will be called the SWITCH edu-ID service.
You might notice in the not so distant future, that a new service will pop in the service catalogue of SWITCH, or that the “edu-ID login window” will look slightly different. But one thing won’t change: in its heart, the SWITCH edu-ID still carries those ideas captured in autumn 2013 by an interuniversity working group.