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Apologies for Cross Posting
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Over the past few years, JISC has invested significant resources in the
development of the next generation of access management technologies through
its Core Middleware programmes. We are now planning a major initiative which
will affect our funding of Athens, which will require institutions to make
choices and decisions. 

On Tuesday 28th February, all Higher Education Vice Chancellors and
Principals in Further Education in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland,
along with publishers, will receive a letter from JISC which details the
changes.

Connecting students and staff to the valuable resources subscribed to by UK
educational institutions is essential to the sector. JISC has made this
possible by funding the Athens service to provide usernames and passwords to
users within UK education, putting us ahead of the rest of the world in
providing a consistent and uniform access mechanism to a wide range of
online content.

To maintain its leading-edge status, JISC is devoting significant funds to
and collaborating internationally on, the development and implementation of
the next generation access-management system based on Shibboleth technology.

Benefits of the new system will include:

- Easier access to online resources for users
- Enhanced opportunities for collaboration
- Facilitation of national e-strategies

In September 2006, JISC will launch its UK Access Management Federation for
UK higher (HE) and further (FE) education institutions. Educational
institutions throughout the UK will be invited to join the UK Federation and
adopt new technology such as Shibboleth. This will provide institutions with
a route to single sign-on to resources for users through the implementation
of federated, devolved authentication. 

The Athens service in its current form will not be funded by JISC after July
2008. JISC has established a transition programme with clear choices to
minimise disruption to end-users. JISC has been working closely with Eduserv
throughout the process.

JISC has produced roadmaps for educational institutions and publishers to
clearly outline the choices that they have to make, these will be sent with
the letters and can be viewed at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/shibboleth.html

JISC will also be providing the community with support in the form of
bulletins, events, training and early-adopter funding over the transition
period.

If you would like to know more please do not hesitate to contact John
Robinson [log in to unmask] or Nicole Harris [log in to unmask] .
Information and experts will also be available at the UCISA and JISC
conferences in March and NetWorkShop in April.