Portal & Authentication Status – Australia

1. Portal & Authentication Status – Australia Alex Reid IT Policy Office The University of Western Australia Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

2. PORTAL STATUS • Survey Early 2001: • Of 45 Unis in Aust/NZ, about 25% have portals • Some early developers, eg U Sydney • Those with high distance ed focus the most advanced, eg Deakin, Monash, Uni of Southern Queensland (voted the “best distance ed Uni worldwide” in 2001) • Almost exclusively focussed on student needs • Mostly home-grown • Some based on Portal function provided by Student Records System package • Many were considering implementing Portals Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

3. PORTAL STATUS - cont • Current situation: • Move away from home-grown to proprietary Portal software (eg Blackboard, Oracle) • Some use of Open Source, eg uPortal • Some significant individual projects in progress • Still predominantly student-oriented • Virtually all planning Portal implementations • Some proliferation of “local” Portals, eg libraries implementing their own Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

4. RELEVANT NATIONAL INITIATIVES • COLIS Project – demonstrate interoperability based on suitable standards between LMS/VLE, Learning Object development systems, Learning Object repositories, Portals; see http://www.colis.mq.edu.au/ • AARLIN Project – like USA ARLIN – Scholarly Portal to electronic information resources; see http://www.aarlin.edu.au/ • WALAP – Western Australian Library Authentication Project – see later slides • National Funding for Information Infrastructure: a collection of inter-related projects to establish a national infrastructure, including authentication, authorisation & access, and building on the above projects – funding provided from 2003. • 29 & 30 May 2003 Conference in Sydney to plan auth/auth/access (AAA) projects using above funding Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

5. WALAP - Joint University Libraries’ Project A nationally-funded project to establish a shared authentication service between the 5 university libraries in Western Australia Curtin Edith Cowan Murdoch Notre Dame UWA See http://john.curtin.edu.au/walap/ Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

6. WALAP Deliverables The WALAP Authentication Project was designed to deliver the following: • Distributed directory service. • Authentication of users. • Distributed administration. • Policy and procedures for authentication. • Technical interfacing specifications. • Technical and cost assessment of interfacing tasks. • Report on possible use by others. Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

7. WALAP Project Relationships WALAP Project: eTrust + local interfaces Directory Services at each university WALAP Infrastructure Sub-Project: CA & eTrust Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

8. WALAP System Configuration Edith Cowan Notre Dame Curtin UWA Library System Student Records Learning Environment Staff Records Other Records Other Systems WALAP Directories Within each university eg Murdoch WALAP Directory University Directory Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

9. WALAP Design • Products considered: • CA – eTrust Directory • Rescue – Novell eDirectory/DirXML • ITMA/MiSG – Novell eDirectory/DirXML • Adacel – View500 • Rescue/Critical Path – InJoin • Sun – iPlanet • Optimiser – Salmon/SAIL • Microsoft – Active Directory* • Configuration Options considered: • Centralised (star) vs Distributed (mesh) • Duplicated servers – Shadowing • Full vs Partial Remote Replication • Remote Permissions • Directory and Schema Designs Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

10. WALAP Directory Structure Removed Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

11. WALAP Schema Design – Person Object Class auEduPerson * = mandatory attribute Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

12. WALAP Schema Design – Unit Object Class auEduUnit * denotes mandatory attributes Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

13. WALAP Schema Design – Shared Attributes Provisional List of Shared Attributes (visible to other directories): • cn • personID • userPassword • expiryDate • personType • personSubType • activeUnit • member • userCertificate Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

14. WALAP Applications Authentication for: • Library catalogue • Other library systems • Other university systems • Cooperating libraries • Other shared systems (eg LIDDAS inter-library loan)) • Jointly-acquired electronic resources • Nationally-acquired resources An essential piece of enabling infrastructure Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

15. WALAP Benefits • Shared software: • reduced licence costs • reduced support costs • backup support • seamless interaction between universities • reduced systems and database administration • Standard approach to authentication – shared knowledge • Supplier-accepted basis for negotiating shared electronic resources licensing • Consistent interface, approach, administrative arrangements for clients • Single user-name/password (“single sign-on”) • Improved mobility for clients between university sites • Exemplar and driver for other shared projects Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA

16. CONTACT Contact: Alex Reid Alex.Reid@uwa.edu.au IT Policy Office c/- School of Computer Science & Software Engineering University of Western Australia Crawley, WA, 6009, Australia Phone: +61 89 380 2639 Fax: +61 89 380 1089 www.itpo.uwa.edu.au (phone in UK until 30-Jun-03: +44 1451 824 329) Aust Portals Status & WALAP - Alex Reid, University of WA