REFEDS: Research and Education Federations

The aim of the REFEDS (Research and Education FEDerationS) activity is to look at technical specifications as well as policies to define procedures and guidelines to allow for interoperability of federations.

Institutions have been trying to develop reliable solutions to authenticate and authorise their users. The increasing mobility of users and the increasing number of international projects has resulted in the need for collaboration beyond institutional borders.

The number of federations is increasing and appears to be the way forward. New issues have arisen relating to the way different federations inter-operate with each other.

How can users from one federation be accepted by another federation? What are the technical challenges to allow multiple federations (confederations) to share a resource? To authenticate / authorise users? How does the trust model work? All these questions still need answering.

REFEDS aims to look at all these issues and to provide some guidelines for those interested in setting up a federation.

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