Federations
Description
A federation is an association of organizations that come together to exchange information (as appropriate) about their respective users and resources in order to enable collaborations and transactions. With an emphasis on privacy within university communities and a need for collaboration, the capability to federate identities becomes critical for day-to-day business. Federations allow users to share resources within an agreed upon trust fabric. Based on the work of the Internet2 Middleware Initiative (NMI) a federation called InCommon has been created to support collaboration for education and research. Penn State is one of the first universities to join InCommon and participate in the InCommon working groups that define policy, determine costs and packaging, and provide technical advise. Penn State uses the Shibboleth http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/ architecture on which the InCommon Federation is built.
Publications
N/A
Resources
Internet2 Middleware Initiative
Primary ET Contact
Renee Shuey RShuey@psu.edu
Collaborators
Applied Information Technologies (AIT) in ASET, Administrative Information Services (AIS), Digital Library Technologies (DLT), and Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT), also units of ITS. ET staff continue to work with business partners as well to identify when federated identities are necessary.
Expected Deliverable(s)
Membership and participation in InCommon Federation.
Level of ET Involvement
ET will participate at both the national level through Internet2, as well as on the local level, to establish federated relationships.
Initiative Start Date
January 2003