GÉANT staff and community members work with a range of groups across the wider research and education community to support the development, implementation and use of trust and identity technologies and concepts.
The Task Force on Distributed Ledger Technologies (TF-DLT) is a working group within the GÉANT Community Programme, initiated in May 2021. The group will explore the use of distributed ledger technologies and distributed identity, as well as Self Sovereign Identity (SSI) in the context of the research and the education community. This is a forum for gathering and exchanging experiences, ideas, knowledge and best practices, and for exploring related technologies, protocols and standards.
The Trust and Identity Incubator uses an agile approach to explore new ideas in the space of trust and identity for research and education, and investigate new technologies that do not yet have a place in the project’s services ecosystem. Work can include testing or experimenting with potential new features for existing GÉANT services or developing business cases for new services and developments that would improve data protection and privacy aspects in services or software.
The Trust and Identity Incubator Mentorship Programme brings together ambitious young professionals from across Europe with subject matter experts within the GÉANT Project’s Trust and Identity Incubator. This collaboration with the GÉANT Learning And Development team and National Research and Education Networks aims to contribute to a viable and sustainable pipeline of trust and identity products and services for the GÉANT project and the European NREN community.
Federated Identity Management for Libraries (FIM4L) is a library-led working group that aims to further the use of federated identity management technologies by libraries, by providing guidelines on deployment while preserving user privacy. FIM4L was initiated in the AARC project and now has members from at least four continents, with the European branch also organising itself as a LIBER working group.
The REFEDS (Research and Education FEDerations) group evolved in close cooperation with the GÉANT community and its programme of Task Forces and Special Interest Groups, and its secretariat is coordinated by a member of GÉANT Association staff. As the ‘voice’ that articulates the needs of research and education identity federations worldwide, REFEDS represents their requirements in the ever-growing space of access and identity management.
AEGIS brings together representatives from research and e-infrastructures, operators of Authentication & Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI) services and trust and identity experts from the GÉANT community. The group enhances the wider and more effective uptake of AAI recommendations by research- and e-infrastructures in their federated access solutions, so that they can focus on providing other support for research activities.
Federated Identity Management for Research (FIM4R) is a collection of research communities and infrastructures with a shared interest in enabling federated identity management for their research cyber-infrastructures. FIM4R develops requirements bearing on technical architecture, federated identity management, and operational policies needed to achieve a harmonious integration between research cyber-infrastructures and research and education federations.
