How eduGAIN can help education: a real life story Sabita Behari Product Manager TNC14

Virtual Campus Hub: how it all began

Ambition ‘a technical platform that can deliver virtual meeting spaces for lectures, conferences, laboratory and numerical exercises, as well as innovation tools, executive learning modules, self-study, etc’.

Very ambitious indeed ‘a technical platform that can deliver virtual meeting spaces for lectures, conferences, laboratory and numerical exercises, as well as innovation tools, executive learning modules, self-study, etc’. EVERYTHING

Results First use of eduGAIN on a production level, involving several IdPs and (commercial) SPs: working environment A ‘how to’ with steps on setting up an international collaboration environment An infographic about collaborating online

Some lessons learned Having a project leader is essential

Having a clear view of all parties involved would have been very useful However, we did not do our homework beforehand

It worked to have committed resources: you need people to do technical implementations and fix issues. The EU funding the project helped a lot with this.

‘All politics is local’ (Thomas P. O’Neill, December 9, 1912 – January 5, 1994) Source:

‘Don’t expect me to say anything sensible about computers…’ Barend Mons, keynote speaker at opening plenary TNC14

Education and research first, not the cool technical stuff Most people have never heard of federations

‘Security is more important than the vision of the school’ Jelmer Evers, keynote speaker at TNC14 this morning

There is still no optimal solution for guest users ? ? ? ? ? ?

Not every IdP is a member of a federation Not every federation is a member of eduGAIN

How we got there In 16 simple steps Ok…maybe not that simple

1 Get a Champion ✓ The project needs a specific person within each institution who is responsible for the overall project and can make decisions. ✓ This person should serve as a central point of contact, coordinate the activities and communication and fix issues within the local organization.

2 List requirements Decide on the functional requirements for your collaboration and match these to the technical possibilities.

3 Analyse stakeholders Make a stakeholder analysis. Involve everyone from the beginning of the project. Create an inventory of the responsibilities of each stakeholder and the risks involved for the implementation of each of their tasks. Give credit where credit is due: mention contributors (the EU!)

4 Secure resources Be sure there are enough people involved within the organisations for development, configuration and management.

5 Involve all relevant national federations Make sure all relevant National Federations are involved from the start of the project.

6 Inform yourself about federations Get familiar with the functionality of identity federations.

7 Manage expectations Discuss the goals and desired functionalities from the get-go. Discuss what is technically feasible and what policies and processes come into play. Make a plan with milestones and evaluate these during the project.

8 Make sure institutions have an Identity Provider and are connected to their national federation ✓ Early on in the project, make sure all the institutions are a member of their local federation. SOURCE: geant.net

9 Make an inventory of users ✓ Analyse whether there are ‘guest users’ in the IdPs and decide how to deal with them. Are they allowed access? How is this access arranged?

10 Connect local services to local federations The services involved in the project should be connected to the national federations. The existing expertise of the national federation’s experts should be used to streamline this domestication effort.

11 Agree on attribute exchange ✓ The institutions that provide the user identities should agree with the service providers on which attributes are available and can be used.

12 Make sure local federations are members of eduGAIN ✓ Make sure all the involved federations are members of eduGAIN on the production level. ✓ When a federation uses a hub-and-spoke model, SAML- scoping for IdP-preselection should be supported. Otherwise, users will be confronted with two IdP selection pages.

13 Test the eduGAIN connection As a first step in making the international connections, the federations involved should test their eduGAIN implementation by connecting test services to foreign test identity providers, and vice versa. SOURCE: geant.net

14 Publish participating IdPs and SPs in eduGAIN Make sure you can answer: who should make an agreement with whom in the relation of SP, federation 1, federation 2 and the IdP which agreement is valid for the connection between foreign SPs and local IdPs via eduGAIN how an IdP should give permission for the connection

15 Make interconnections between services and institutions via eduGAIN In the case of a hub-and-spoke federation, like SURFconext (NL) or WAYF (DK), it is the responsibility of the federation operator. In the case of mesh federations, like Swamid (SE) or SWITCH (CH), this should be handled by the administrators of the services and identity providers themselves.

16 Educate users Make end-users aware of which services are available, how they get access to the applications, and how the login procedure works. Students Researchers Education institutions Collaborative Organisations

Consider implementing a central portal so users have a central starting point. For pointers on the most effective way to present federated identity to users of your site, visit the REFEDS Discovery Guide.REFEDS Discovery Guide

Conclusion It was not always easy, but federations and eduGAIN have great value for our community. It is clear that NRENs are in a unique position to actively shape and support these new kinds of collaborations in higher education and research.

More information We are happy to provide you with more detailed information. Visit or us. Visit for more on the Virtual Campus Hub Project. Check out our infographic about international online collaboration. It contains links to the 16 steps and lessons learned.infographic Visit to read more about eduGAIN.

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