Funding and Development

In June 2007 Netskills was funded by JISC to develop and deliver a workshop to help the community explore and assess the core technical skills required to deploy federated access management technology at their institutions. A pilot workshop was held in July 2007 and from that event and the feedback it produced, a full programme was put in place.

Further JISC funding from the Access Management Transition programme enabled us to provide over 100 free places to staff from 120 institutions on the workshop Federated Access Management: Core Skills for Identity Providers.

In the summer of 2008, JISC also funded the development of a complementary workshop, Federated Access Management: Core Skills for Service Providers for publishers providing online resources within the UK Federation, along with provision for some paid-for places. This programme is due to start in September 2008.

Core Skills for Identity Providers

The initial focus for training was for institutions to act as a federated Identity Provider (IdP) for their users.

The core IdP training programme ran from October 2007 to July 2008. Eleven fully subscribed events were held at venues around the UK, including; London, Manchester, Coventry, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Taunton, Belfast and Newcastle.

The workshop itself has evolved to keep pace with the changes in the UK federation landscape in the run up to the Athens changeover on August 1st 2008.

Audience feedback from the training has been excellent. This is also reflected in the uptake of federation technologies at institutions that have engaged with the programme - including some who had deployed a working IdP by the following week!

Core Skills for Service Providers

Netskills will also be offering training for those wish to act as a Service Provider (SP) within the UK federation. The programme for Federated Access Management: Core Skills for Service Providers will begin in September 2008 with workshops in London, before being rolled out across the UK.

The initial development for this workshop has been funded by JISC and the primarily aim for this training is to engage the smaller third party publishers who are yet to deploy services within the UK federation. However the training will be suitable for all of the UK federation community.

A full description of the workshop is available, including the latest timetable information.

Netskills project team

For more information about this project and the associated training programmes contact:

• Chris Young – Senior Consultant Trainer
• Carl Vincent – Systems Manager

Further help and support

UK Federation - includes documents and details for joining the UK Federation.

JISC Access Management - JISC support for the transition to federated access management .