A strategy for trusted identity access across national research infrastructure to support international collaboration
Australian Access Federation’s (AAF) Head of eResearch, Sarah Nisbet, and eResearch Portfolio Manager, Nick Rossow, attended the AARC TREE kick-off meeting in the Netherlands, as a part of developing a Trust and Identity Framework for national research infrastructures, to support international collaboration.
Sarah and Nick hosted a study tour in March to visit exemplar trust and identity facilities in Europe, alongside our partners, the National Imaging Facility (NIF) and ACCESS-NRI, who are currently working with the AAF to implement trusted identity access across their organisations and services.
As a part of the tour, the group were invited to attend the AARC TREE (Authentication and Authorisation for Research and Collaboration (AARC) Technical Revision to Enhance Effectiveness (TREE)) kick-off meeting in Utrecht, Netherlands. The AARC TREE project team are following the Australian Trust and Identity program and are keen to keep up-to-date with our findings and advancements of the Trust and Identity framework.
The AARC TREE project aims to define common strategies for the development and deployment of Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructures (AAIs) in Europe and beyond. The objective is to improve access and sharing of scientific resources, and to improve interoperability among research infrastructure communities across thematic areas.
The four key goals of the AARC TREE project are to:
- Capture and analyse new authentication and authorisation interoperability requirements
- Expand the number of research communities that can implement the AARC Blueprint Architecture (BPA) and/or guidelines
- Define new technical and policy guidelines for the AARC BPA that address research infrastructures use cases
- Bring together research infrastructures and stakeholders together to align strategies and technologies across thematic areas.
Learnings from these discussions will help to further shape the best practice Trust and Identity Framework for national research infrastructure in Australia.
