How does my organisation join the Federation?

What is the AAF?

The Australian Access Federation (AAF) is Australia’s research and education identity federation and part of a global network of over 80 federations around the world. The AAF is a vital part of the Australian eResearch infrastructure landscape enabling the safe and secure exchange of information between education and research institutions, both locally and internationally. 

AAF removes inter-organisational barriers to collaboration by enabling people to quickly and easily connect with electronic resources. Resource providers are also able to quickly and easily connect their services to over 1.5 million people connected to the AAF today. 

What is the Federation?

Federated identity and access management removes barriers to collaboration through a mutual trust agreement between services and organisations. This means organisations do not need to create, implement and maintain multiple agreements with hundreds of different services. The connection is seamless and often goes unnoticed.  

By joining the Federation, users can access national research services and platforms with one username and password. One integration with your authentication service allows users to easily access a wide variety of applications.

The Australian Access Federation provides a single sign on solution for research and education that allows you to seamlessly access a wide range of educational and research services. We also provide an easy way to collaborate with international colleagues using eduGAIN. 

Operating as a shared service, the growing AAF subscriber base encompasses many leading organisations in the research and education sector, these include: 

• nearly all Australian Universities 
• CSIRO and other government research agencies, medical research institutes and leading research support organisations 
• providers of online products or services for teaching, learning and research. 

How do I connect to the Federation? 

Your best option will depend on how you want to interact with other Federation subscribers. There are two connection options available:

• accessing and providing services 
• providing a service only 

If your organisation is interested in joining the Federation, please contact us.