The International e-Framework

e-Framework Partnership agencies

The e-Framework is an initiative that was initially established by the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Australia's Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR). In 2007, the two founding partners were joined by the New Zealand Ministry of Education (NZ MoE) and The Netherlands SURF Foundation (SURF).

Mission of the e-Framework Partnership

"Collaborating to realise the strategic potential of Information and Communication Technology for Education and Research"

Profile of the e-Framework Partnership

Information and communication technologies are transforming the way that individuals, institutions and societies learn, work and live. These technologies offer enormous potential benefits for the conduct of teaching, learning, research, and educational administration, but those benefits can be difficult or expensive to realise. Collaboration, whether on a regional, national or international level, offers a means to maximize the benefits of ICT related investment, and to mitigate and spread associated risks.

The International e-Framework is a strategic partnership of agencies with a common interest in the development of infrastructure and services to support the innovative use of ICT within education and research. The Partnership promotes the exchange of strategic approaches to the development and adoption of such technologies. It seeks to collaboratively draw strategic lessons from these exchanges for the benefit of partner agencies and their national constituencies.

The e-Framework Partnership recognizes that the development of ICT-based infrastructures and services to support education and research reach beyond national boundaries, and operate in an international context. The Partnership therefore seeks to encourage and enable the use of ICT by collaboratively promoting the development and adoption of common approaches to interoperability, and common, interoperable infrastructures wherever appropriate. The e-framework Partnership collaborates to provide a common voice for the education and research sectors in international specifications and standards bodies.

Early work of the e-Framework Partnership has addressed multiple challenges posed by service-oriented approaches to ICT systems analysis and design. Such approaches offer great benefits in terms of flexibility, suitability for purpose, and potential cost savings. They are, however, complex, and require considerable expertise to implement. The e-Framework Partnership has developed a common approach to the description of service oriented design and analysis. The core objective of this work is to facilitate sharing experience and expertise more effectively across national boundaries, in addition to the domains of learning and teaching, research, and administration. The early results of this work are stored in an open international service knowledgebase which is built around community submissions.

More details of the work of the e-Framework Partnership for Education and Research are available elsewhere on this site.

 

Last updated 8 May 2009