Eduserv Symposium 2009

Evolution or revolution: The future of identity and access management for research

Identity and access management have become central issues for the future of the web following the unprecedented growth in user-generated content, collaboration and social activity.

This year's Eduserv Symposium focused on how the academic community must meet the challenge that this new world presents for research and scholarly communication. Sophisticated, ubiquitous Web technologies are enabling growing numbers of researchers to collaborate across institutional and geographic boundaries. In realising this potential we must deal with complex issues around ownership, trust, access and distribution as both institution-centric and user-centric identity solutions compete for our attention.

Agenda

The day included a variety of perspectives, both technological and socio-political, that will provide a firmer understanding of how universities in the UK can develop effective ways of managing the identity of their researchers and access to their services.

• What is the relative importance of the 'organisation' vs. the 'virtual organisation' to research collaboration and what impact does that have on our choice of identity management solutions?
• Has the notion of a researcher's digital identity been fundamentally changed by Web 2.0 and the growth of 'open science'?
• How do we democratise the research environment to include those who are not formally part of an 'institution'?
• What kinds of access and identity management challenges do UK HE institutions face in supporting their researchers who collaborate primarily with peers and colleagues in other organisations, often in other countries?
• What kinds of federations or other groupings of institutions and service providers, in terms of both policy and technology, make sense in such a distributed research world?
• How can we work across multiple federations and multiple technologies?

Full programme

Speakers

The 2009 Eduserv Symposium drew together key individuals from across the academic and Web space to discuss the state of the art and identify potential future directions in this area.

• James Farnhill, Access and Identity Management Lead, Innovation Group at the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)
• Nate Klingenstein, Senior Technical Analyst at Internet2
• Cameron Neylon, Senior Scientist at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
• Mike Roch, Director of IT Services at the University of Reading
• David Smith, Business Innovations Manager at CABI
• John Watt, Grid Engineer/Support Officer at the National e-Science Centre (NeSC) in Glasgow

Speaker biographies and presentation summaries

Take part in the debate

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