As announced the phase of the survey conduction has started and the RFI documents have been sent to interested participants 4th of May.
The RFI documents are published on the Swiss edu-ID website.
Deadline for RFI answers is May 22nd, 2016.
By June 1st the most promising participants will be determined and invited to a presentation workshop.
Workshops will take place from June 6th until 10th.
Thursday 30 June 2016, Berne
Would you like to know more about the
or more about the
Then we would like to invite you to this event with an AAI Update in the morning (10:15 – 12:00)
followed by a Swiss edu-ID Update in the afternoon (13:15 – 16:15).
LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, recently announced that their project had detected ripples in the fabric of spacetime, proving a prediction made 100 years ago by Einstein. Many teams collaborated to ensure this result, and behind the scenes, they rely on effective federated identity management.
What this means, in the simplest terms, is scientists rely on the ability of research services to get attributes about their users from their Home Organisations. However, as REFEDS (Research and Education Federations) points out in an important blog entry, this is not at all smooth sailing.
Save the Date: Thursday 30 June 2016
This year the joint update event of SWITCHaai & Swiss edu-ID will take place for the third time – this year a little bit earlier – already dated June 30, as ever in Berne.
Note the date in your agenda for this all-day event where you will get up-to-date information about SWITCHaai, Swiss edu-ID version 2.0 and migration scenarios, as well as having opportunities for exchange with IdM/IAM specialists and service responsibles of other institutions.
Registration information follows later in this blog, AAI mailinglists and the Swiss edu-ID newsletter (swit.ch/swisseduid-announce).
Since February 2012, SWITCH has operated the Guest Login Identity Provider (Guest IdP), which allowed users without a regular AAI account to access certain services. The Guest IdP has also allowed what was otherwise not possible with SWITCHaai: a quick and easy self-registration to access AAI services.
Imagine you get a Swiss electronic identity. What should it look like?
Fedpol asked the Swiss edu-ID team to comment on their concept of a federal eID.
A starting point
In Sweden more than 50% of citizens already have an eID – an identity originally issued by the private sector (as banks) and developed further towards a standardised identity assertion and a more federated approach. Meanwhile, in Switzerland the foundation for a federal electronic identity will now be laid by presenting an eID concept to the Federal Council and then by starting the process to implement it in law.
As e-identities are widely used in Switzerland and also issued by several organisations (SuisseID, MobileID, Swiss edu-ID etc.), in May 2015 the Federal Office of Police (fedpol) started a consultation about the proposed eID concept. SWITCH provided our statement among a group of 68 companies and institutions with expertise in Identity Management. Now the interpretation of the answers and conclusions are available.
The Swiss edu-ID project is partly funded through the funding programme P-2 of swissuniversities. The project manager of P-2, Roland Dietlicher, shares his views on the achievements and challenges of the funding programme P-2 in the latest SWITCH story. In doing that, he also covers the importance of the academic identity Swiss edu-ID to the success of the P-2 programme.
Thursday 13 August 2015, Berne
Would you like to know more about the SWITCHaai current state, IdP Clustering, MFA and eduGAIN, or more about how Swiss edu-ID progresses, outcomes, next steps and what pilots are on the way?
Then we would like to invite you to this event with an AAI Update in the morning (10:15 – 12:00)
followed by a Swiss edu-ID Update in the afternoon (13:15 – 16:15) to inform and discuss about
The final reports of the Business Model and Governance Model Working Groups are available
The Business Model Report describes relevant information and methods to be used for the Business Model as
Recommendations for the Swiss edu-ID Business Model elaboration and refining:
Next steps:
The Governance Model Report describes
Recommendations:
Next steps:
The Swiss edu-ID project management is happy to announce that we received the approval for the Phase 2 project by swissuniversities (CUS P-2 program) ! The corresponding proposal was submitted in February 2015.
Main goals of Phase 2 (Aug. 2015 – Dec. 2016) are:
Project Abstract
New national services being developed within the frame of the CUS P-2 project will in almost all cases require reliable identity and access management (IAM). The Swiss edu-ID addresses that need, by providing a comprehensive IAM service framework to all relevant players: universities, individuals and service providers.
The SWITCHaai is a well-established IAM solution for the Swiss universities that places identity management under the responsibility of the participating universities and allows for effective resource sharing across organisational borders. However, this approach has several drawbacks:
The Swiss edu-ID is addressing those shortcomings. It does it by building on the very successful SWITCHaai, but changing/extending it in several ways. In the predecessor project “Swiss edu-ID” the basis for a successful continuation was set by completing the Swiss edu-ID high-level architecture, by implementing Swiss edu-ID V0.5 with a new set attributes, and by conducting a market overview of access management platforms. The first important change is delivered by the Swiss edu-ID v1.0 service:
The project „Swiss edu-ID Phase II“ described in this proposal will implement the Swiss edu-ID v2.0 service with those two additional features:
Services wishing to make use of the functions offered by the “Swiss edu-ID” will receive consultancy services from the project, get access to the Swiss edu-ID service and the project will seek ways to support use cases needing adaptations or extensions to the existing services. Specific integration work at the user side, however, is not within scope and should be provided by the respective user service. Project management will take appropriate steps to evaluate requests for functional extensions within the governance structures.
The e-portfolio service SWITCHportfolio is now officially supporting the Swiss edu-ID.
With the Swiss edu-ID a user can maintain a personal e-portfolio in SWITCHportfolio even without affiliation as student or staff at a university. This feature is particularly useful for students who have created an extensive e-portfolio during their studies and who are soon going to leave the university. By transferring their portfolio to the alumni-environment on SWITCHportfolio, users can continue to maintain it long after they have left the university.
For more information on how the transfer from a student-portfolio to an alumni-portfolio is best organized please contact the SWITCHportfolio service team.
The working group “Mobile App Support” has completed its final report.
The aims were to describe requirements of institutions/users, discuss ideas for better mobile support, evaluate existing solutions and options for pilot projects.
The report describes relevant mobile applications used/developed at the participating institutions, mentions possible benefits for mobile applications using Swiss edu-ID, identifies common mobile frameworks, lists general requirements and possible pilot candidates for Swiss edu-ID.
Support of mobile applications is a must but not a high priority on the roadmap of the Swiss edu-ID project. Only few applications could be identified as valuable pilots since many of the used mobile applications do not need authentication or have already realized local authentication solutions.
Some institutions focus on web applications that can be AAI-enabled, given that resources and expertise for native application development may be limited.
Most promising idea for a pilot is the one of a broker/authentication application supporting authentication for several mobile applications via Swiss edu-ID (comparable to social logins like Twitter accounts beeing used by other applications to authenticate users). An authentication app could also be used to authenticate at the same time against a mobile application and its server part (e.g. Moodle Mobile application and Moodle web server).
Those options will be investigated further by the eduhub Special Interest Group Mobile Learning.
Owners of a Swiss edu-ID can now link their ORCID iD (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) to their Swiss edu-ID profile. Go to your Swiss edu-ID profile and link your ORCID iD now.
The ORCID iD is imported to the Swiss edu-ID profile in a secure way making sure that only the owner of the ORCID iD can import it, and that the iD can’t be tampered with.
Individuals who do not yet have an ORCID iD can create one on the fly and link it to their Swiss edu-ID.
Once the ORCID iD is linked to a Swiss edu-ID account, it is available to services in the attribute eduPersonOrcid. This greatly helps services to include the ORCID iD in their business workflows and likewise enhances the benefit for scientific authors.
About ORCID: ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a nonproprietary code to uniquely identify scientific and academic authors. It is operated by the non profit organization orcid.org. Individuals can include their ORCID identifier on their web page, in their publications, when they apply for grants, and in any research workflow to ensure they get credit for their work.
See also Swiss edu-ID ORCID working group report.
SWITCH is happy to announce the start of the productive phase of Swiss edu-ID Version 1.0.
The user interface is available here and allows individuals to create their Swiss edu-ID identity from scratch or to build one based on a SWITCHaai account.
The Swiss edu-ID Identity Provider is ready for pilots and productive services that wants to connect their resources.
This will allow such services to open up new groups of users as:
The Swiss edu-ID IdP is part of the SWITCHaai federation and therefore rules of this framework apply.
Several pilot projects and resources are already foreseen to connect to Swiss edu-ID in 2015, but we welcome other services that want to profit by the possible larger user base and verified core attributes to discuss implementation options (contact swisseduid@switch.ch).