The Identity Management Toolkit Project[1] ran from 1 January 2009 to 30 June 2010 and was based on direct experience gained by project partners from work undertaken in The Identity Project[2]. The aim of the Toolkit project was to produce downloadable and online versions of the Toolkit for use by executive and technical staff in Further and Higher Education institutions who wanted to review, assess and improve the performance of Identity Management in their organisations.
A secondary aim of the project was to support efforts by JISC to raise and maintain awareness of the importance and key issues of Identity Management for the UK academic community, particularly with respect to:
The Toolkit was launched at the UCISA[3] and JISC[4] annual conferences in March/April 2010. The availability of the Toolkit has been highlighted in a number of publications and presentations at events relevant to the target audience. There has been a high level of interest in the toolkit both nationally and internationally.
The Toolkit was field-tested during the project by use in institutional projects at a large university and a FE college, with detailed feedback from staff involved in those projects being used to refine the final versions of the Toolkit. Bidders may want to refer to the case study (“Case Study: Identity Management at Cardiff University: Membership, Categories and Entitlement.”[5]), on the Identity Management Toolkit website for further information. Although Cardiff was not one of the field-test sites for the Toolkit (and this use case was a supplementary piece of work produced after the Toolkit was published), it provides an example of a possible template for collecting use cases. Other formats including multimedia formats will be accepted.
The following sections are included within the Toolkit. JISC has not ranked these by importance and all bids should address one or more of these areas:
Identity Management Governance and Policies: Describes the roles, structures and policies required for Identity Management and how they relate to Identity Management systems and processes.
Identity Management Systems, Components and Functions: The technical components and functions of Identity Management systems in an academic institution.
Defining Institutional Requirements: Functional requirements for each component of an Identity Management system, which may be useful in defining the objectives of an in-house implementation project or in detailed specifications to suppliers.
Discovering and Auditing Current Institutional Identity Management: A detailed guide to assessing the state of Identity Management in an institution with a comprehensive audit (based on work of the JISC Identity Project which developed and tested Identity Management audits in several universities).
Gap Analysis: Explains how to establish the current and desired states of Identity Management, gives a list of common gaps in Further and Higher Education Institutions, and suggests ways for developing a strategy.
An Institutional Roadmap for Identity Management: Producing an overall roadmap or programme plan. Prioritising major deliverables and milestones by achievability, cost and institutional impact.
Designing and Managing an Identity Management Project: Project management issues particular to implementing Identity Management, including key institutional benefits of improved Identity Management for use in an institutional business case.
Selecting Supplier Solutions: Where commercial procurement of systems or components is required, this section aims to help understand the Identity Management system solutions available, produce procurement criteria, and construct tender documents.
Although the Toolkit website is the main resource for information on this call, bidders should be aware that JISC Collections is funding a project that is looking at extending Access Management and Identity Management to external Business Community Engagement (BCE) partners. This project is based on the Extending Access Management report[6]. As this project is required to look at the Toolkit developments, successful bidders should be aware of the work being undertaken in this project and communicate with them as necessary. The project details are available from http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/Our-projects/EAM2BCE/.
The Toolkit project has set up contact points for further engagement with the JISC community specific to Identity Management issues, including the website, an email enquiry point (jisc-identity-management@jiscmail.ac.uk) for direct (private) communication with JISC support for Identity Management, and a public email discussion list (identity-project-public@jiscmail.ac.uk). To contact the creators of the Toolkit, please use the jisc-identity-management@jiscmail.ac.uk mailing list.
The Access and Identity Management (AIM) Programme uses the tag #jiscaim. Further information supporting this call will be available via the AIM blog http://aimprog.jiscinvolve.org/wp/. A collection of all tagged content is available at the Netvibes AIM page http://www.netvibes.com/jiscaim#General, where you can read blog postings, tweets and information on other AIM funded projects. If any bidder wants to comment, or raise an issue, during the proposal writing phase they are encouraged to do so and to use the above tag.
[6] Oakleigh Consulting (2009) Extending Access Management into Business and Community Engagement – Scoping Study: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/bce/extendingaccessmanagementreport.pdf