View slides from this presentation  (300 Kb)

Abstract

The Australian Access Federation (AAF) will link Australian higher education and research institutions together in a single trust federation to facilitate trusted electronic communications and collaboration. In order for this federation to operate successfully, agreement must be reached on the data schemas to be used with the federation, especially data schemas describing identities. The AUeduPerson Working Group has been tasked with drafting and recommending data schemas for the AAF based on the community’s requirements.

This presentation will describe:

• What is a data schema
• Issues to consider in developing an identity data schema
• Schemas used in other federations, including eduPerson, UKeduPerson, and SwissEduPerson
• Efforts to make schemas interoperable
• Approach taken by the auEduPerson Working Group
• Progress of the auEduPerson Working Group
  

About the speakers

Rodney McDuff is currently the Manager of the Strategic Technologies Group with the Information Technology Services at The University of Queensland. He also works on the eSecurity Framework project and the Australian Access Federation project. Whilst at ITS Rodney has also been responsible for the planning, implementation and maintenance of core IT infrastructure services, applications and systems at UQ. He has also previously worked as a Research Fellow at the Advanced Computation Modelling Centre.

Patty McMillan works for the University of Queensland as Project Manager for the Middleware Action Plan and Strategy (MAPS) project. She also chairs the AUeduPerson Working Group for the Australian Access Federation (AAF) and is an Australian liaison to the European Committee on Academic Middleware (ECAM). Patty holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Management, a Master of Science in Library Science, and a Bachelor of Arts with a major in Mathematics. Patty has worked for Carnegie Mellon University and the Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh (USA), as well as Macquarie University, the University of Sydney, and the University of Queensland. Her roles have included librarian, computer science research associate, web developer, web services manager, business analyst, and business integration manager. Her most recent role prior to the MAPS project was as ICT Relationship Manager at the University of Sydney, liaising between the university's central ICT area and its academic and research areas.