JANET hosts dedicated Federated Access Management event for FE

16 February 2009 - In response to a call from the FE sector, a dedicated event was held to help this sector move towards the adoption of federated access management. The event was focused with the needs of this sector in mind and delegates were treated to real examples of federation members from FE deploying federated access management within their organisaiton.

The day started with federation updates and key drivers for federated access managment from Mark Williams and Nicole Harris (JISC) and Simon Cooper (JANET(UK)). This was followed by three case studies from members of the UK federation who have adopted access management.

The first, from Will Davidson from Halesowen College, made the business case for federated access management. Colin Bruce from Coventry University then covered deployment using the Windows Quick Installer. Both gave a very positive message regarding the advantages of federated access management and of the relating outcomes during the actual deployment exercise, such as improving internal processes for maintaining user information.

A further case study from Andy Morris of Kidderminster gave an insight into the steps required for deployment and a useful checklist to follow. This presentation was aimed more at the technical level and for those persons working within IT departments.

Video recordings of all three community case studies will be posted on the UK federation website for the community to make use of.

To finish off the day three additional speakers gave an overview of the support and training available through the UK federation - these were Gill Chester from JANET Training, Chris Young from Netskills and Max Norton from RSC London.

We will be reviewing the event and identifying future needs to support the community.

Another regional briefing event is being held in Bristol on 11th March which will take the form of discussion groups. This event will be open to all sectors and is intended to help organisations move towards the implementation of federated access management. For further details of this and future events, please go to:

http://www.ukfederation.org.uk/content/Documents/EventList