MAMS Testbed Federation Mini-Grant Scheme

Background

In order to promote growth and use of the "MAMS Testbed Federation", MAMS proposed a mini-grant scheme to DEST which provides funding assistance for HE institutions to join the testbed federation as an IdP and SP. As the attractiveness of a Federation is based on the value of available services, the emphasis was on encouraging HE institutions to join as SPs.

Following agreement with DEST to provide funding of $40K to 8-10 institutions, in two rounds, the round-1 Mini-Grant Application Invitation was prepared and released.

Round 1 Proposals

The following round-1 proposals were chosen as recipients of mini-grant funding:

AARNet

Griffith University

Nanostructural Analysis Network Organisation

University of Queensland

Queensland University of Technology

Proposal Summaries

The following are summaries of the proposals describing in brief the contribution as an IdP and/or SP.

AARNet

AARNet has identified a number of possible "services" for a feasibility analysis and then if successful to "shibbolise", test and deploy onto the federation and are listed in as follows

RETAIN: A storage hosting facility based on SRB/DSPACE to host multiple services. ResearchChannel^?: A multimedia "on-demand" & re-broadcasting service hosted on RETAIN

ENUM: A service that allows users or institutions to register an ENUM and modify NAPTR records to be able to control the routing of personal communications over SIP for example.

SMS Gateways: A facility that is currently in an early design phase that could be developed on a national scale to offer SMS messaging to institutions to notify class changes, exam results etc.

Internal services: MS Exchange, website/content management systems and wiki access.

Griffith University

As an IdP, Griffith University currently has 290,575 identities within it's corporate directory that will be available for MAMS TestFed^? membership.

SP Options

e-Prints: Allows access for Griffith University and other universities / organizations within the federation to gain access to Griffith University research Pre - published publications.

e-Science data: Will allow for easy access to e-science data by Griffith University and other universities / organizations within the federation. This would provide a repository of actual research data from Griffith University researchers.

Queensland College of Art (QCA) Student art works: Will allow for other universities to also be able to view artwork produced by Griffith University QCA students.

Staff Technical Wiki: This option will allow staff from other universities to collaborate on certain areas of interest (e.g. Upgrades of software packages (e.g., PeopleSoft^? upgrade), Setup / maintenance of Shibboleth, General Hints and tips).

Innovative Research Universities Australia (IRUA): This option could enable the IRUA to bring together six world class universities who share common aims, standards and values through a single authenticated access to digital information.

Nanostructural Analysis Network Organisation (NANO)

Using funding from a successful ARC eResearch initiative grant application (GRANI - A Grid-enabled Archive of Nanostructural Imagery), work has recently begun on:

• development of tools to enable the capture, description, storage, retrieval and analysis of scientific images and data across the nodes;
• development of a prototype system operating between the NANO nodes at UQ and USyd;
• construction of a testbed database of scientific images and data distributed between UQ and USyd;
• development of web search, browse, query and presentation interface to the image database.

The goal of this project is to create the key additional components for the distributed database:

• Federated identity and access management tools - user login, authentication and authorization (using Shibboleth, SAML and eduPerson);
• Secure authenticated access to the distributed database of scientific images, video and data generated by NANO users, across the network.

Queensland University

This is a project to develop a shibboleth enabled authentication and authorisation framework to facilitate access to content hosted in an Institutional Repository (IR) managed by the University of Queensland Library (UQ eSpace). The framework will provide user authentication and authorisation to this service with the aim of providing cross-institutional authorisation to selected content.

Queensland University of Technology

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in collaboration with the Australian Technology Network (ATN) universities: University of Technology Sydney, RMIT University, University of South Australia, and Curtin University of Technology, seek to develop a strong federated identity model as an important stepping stone towards greater teaching, learning and research collaboration.

The project aims to provide a federated authentication infrastructure for users in Australia and internationally of e-Grad school (Australia) services, and to test its feasibility and workability through its use in the large scale project which involves the e-Grad School with its multiple service providers and nationally distributed user base.

All five ATN universities will become Identity providers in the federation.

-- NeilWitheridge - 04 May 2006
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