Source: Freepik
On March 31, the first funding decision regarding the basic service financing was made. The consortium meeting unanimously decided to fund the basic service application “Identity and Access Management for the German National Research Data Infrastructure (IAM4NFDI)” through the joint Base4NFDI project. IAM4NFDI is thus the first to take the path to an NFDI-wide basic service.
Better Access to Services, Data and Resources With IAM4NFDI
Identity and Access Management (IAM) is all about processes, policies and technologies for managing digital identities and their access rights. IAM4NFDI is dedicated to the NFDI‘s goal of enabling unified access to data, software and computing resources, as well as sovereign data exchange and collaborative working.
The basic service develops a decentralised, federated identity and access management so that users from different disciplines, consortia and research institutions can access digital resources – within the NFDI and beyond – as conveniently as possible. Existing and newly emerging IAM systems are to be interconnected and expanded for this purpose. Interoperability is thus a central requirement.
Across (National) Borders
The technical and organisational framework for a federated IAM is an authentication and authorisation infrastructure (AAI). IAM4NFDI has the task of setting up and providing a state-of-the-art AAI that not only enables cross-consortium but also international cooperation.
A connection between the AAI of the NFDI community and the national identity federation DFN-AAI is planned. The participation of the DFN-AAI in the eduGAIN interfederation will also enable international, cross-federation and cross-community usage scenarios. In plain language, this means that users from about 400 German research and higher education institutions as well as from about 4800 home organisations worldwide can access the services and resources of the NFDI Community AAI.
Significance of the Funding Decision for NRW
The funding decision for IAM4NFDI certainly also benefits the cooperation community Digitale Hochschule NRW (DH.NRW). The association of 42 universities and the Ministry of Culture and Science of NRW intends to decisively advance the RDM and digitisation in science. To this end, they are working together to identify new areas where action is needed, discuss solutions and, by establishing a cross-university digital service structure, form the basis for the digital transformation of NRW as a higher education location.
With the IDM.NRW project, they are also pursuing similar goals: the implementation of federated identity management. The close cooperation with DFN is also common to both initiatives. While the work of IAM4NFDI opens up even more far-reaching possibilities for the goals of IDM.NRW or DH.NRW, on the other hand, the basic service should benefit just as much from the results of the project so far.
Learn More
More information about the basic service can be found in the IAM4NFDI application.
If you have any questions about NFDI or Research Data Management in general, simply contact the IT-ServiceDesk. The RDM team looks forward to hearing from you.
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Responsible for the content of this article is Sophia Nosthoff.
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