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eduGAIN enables federations to exchange service information in a cooperative trust model. Each service offering is delegated to federations and they are able to decide whether this service meets the technical standards of their federation (while a baseline is defined, some federations have more detailed technical requirements). The service’s technical website makes this information available in a transparent manner. The federation certification process requires technical compliance with the Metadata Profile of the eduGAIN Policy Framework. This is achieved through a metadata validation tool allowing federations to monitor their own progress and the progress of other participants.
The eduGAIN interfederation service is deployed using the MDS SAML Aggregator Tool. The aggregation of SAML metadata from member federations is equivalent to compiling a global phonebook of service providers and institutional identity providers that wish to participate in an interfederated environment. The aggregation tool ensures that the information supplied by each federation passes the technical requirements of the interfederation service. Requirements that cannot be programmatically determined are defined in practice statements and reviewed by the eduGAIN Steering Group.
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- More services for members – enables them to access services from different federations.
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- Lower administration costs – thanks to easier technical integration.
- Saves time – no need for bilateral agreements with other federations.
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- Trusted – secure collaboration and exchange of information
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- Wider audience – offer services to a greater number of users (including international).
- Lower costs per user – the audience grows without increasing the demand for passwords and user support.
- For Identity Providers:
- Offer more to your users – enables access to a wider range of services than are available locally or nationally.
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- No extra administrative burden – if you are already participating in a federation with WebSSO.
For Identity Holders:
- Students and Researchers can access a wider range of services than are available nationally or locally.
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- One digital identity and password for all services connected through eduGAIN.
Costs
There is no cost for federations to join eduGAIN
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Engagement activities for the eduGAIN service are directed at both federations/NRENs and user communities. The operator community in particular is directly involved in the day-to-day governance of eduGAIN. The eduGAIN team has engaged with the federation operator community to gather feedback on a range of topics. The concluding months of the GN3 project and the initial months of the GN3plus project (covered by this Service Review Report) focussed on a review of the eduGAIN Policy Framework. This framework, initially conceived during the GN3 project, was updated with significant contributions from the community. All existing eduGAIN members adopted this updated policy. Engagement with research infrastructure projects wishing to use eduGAIN takes place via partner federations and directly via the Enabling Users team. Through this team, the eduGAIN community provides expert know-how for research communities looking to integrate their services with eduGAIN. The task seeks to pilot solutions to key user community challenges such as attribute management, non-web use cases, requirements assessments for LoA and other topics. eduGAIN is consistently represented at FIM4R and has been presented at e-infrastructure meetings to organisations such as PaNdata and DASISH
KPIs
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Roadmap
