The e-Framework for Education and Research is a joint initiative of JISC (UK) and DEST (Australia)
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SURF Industry Liaison on SOA
SURF is currently preparing to undertake some consultation with key stakeholders in the Netherlands concerning Service oriented architecture. An ‘ICT Suppliers SOA Strategies’ day is planned during which the major ICT suppliers to Dutch Higher Education institutions will be invited to clarify their SOA strategy for the coming years. This will be followed by a ‘Higher Education SOA Best Practices’ day during which a number of leading HE institutions will present their SOA strategy and lessons learned so far. These events are planned for early 2007 and should provide input to a SOA roadmap publication for HE institutions in the Netherlands. Later on in 2007 a summer school on Enterprise Architecture and SOA will be organised for information managers and system owners in Higher Education.
NCRIS Funding Announced
November 27th, 2006. Australian science infrastructure will be significantly upgraded by $500 million in Australian Government funding announced by the Minister for Education, Science and Training, the Hon Julie Bishop MP.
“The investments, provided under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), are essential to build our national capacity to generate knowledge and use it to advance our economic, social and environmental objectives,” Minister Bishop said.
Among twelve identified ‘capabilities’ to receive funding will be Platforms for Collaboration.
NCRIS is an initiative under the Australian Government’s Backing Australia’s Ability package which is providing $8.3 billion over ten years to 2011 to strengthen Australia’s ability to generate ideas, accelerate the commercialisation of ideas and develop and retain skills.
More information at: http://www.ncris.dest.gov.au/
Australian Research Quality Framework
November 14th, 2006. The Australian Government will implement a Research Quality Framework (RQF) which will strengthen the assessment of research carried out in Australia, the Minister for Education, Science and Training, the Hon Julie Bishop MP, announced.
The RQF, an Australian Government initiative to formulate a world’s best practice framework for evaluating research quality and the impact of research, will ensure public funding is being invested in research which will deliver real benefits to the wider community.
“The RQF is an important reform for Australian research as it will boost the production of high quality and high impact research and will give Australian researchers greater capacity to compete on the international stage,” Minister Bishop said.
Preparatory work and trialling will continue in 2007, with data collection in 2008 and funding implementation in 2009.
More information at: http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/research_sector/policies_issues_reviews/key_issues/research_quality_framework/
New Zealand’s ICT Strategic Framework
Expenditure in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) across New Zealand’s education sector represents a significant investment. The ICT Strategic Framework for Education (Strategic Framework) has been developed to provide the mechanism to guide and co-ordinate this investment in order to ‘improve learner achievement in an innovative education sector, fully connected and supported by the smart use of ICT’.
The Strategic Framework represents a joint approach to ICT developed by the six New Zealand education sector agencies and the National Library, in consultation with representatives from across the education sector. It is also aligned with and supports the international e-Framework for Education and Research to ensure the benefits of increased collaboration and cooperation between international partners are realised.
Over the next three months, an extensive consultation is being undertaken on the Strategic Framework, the feedback from which will help inform the next iteration of the Strategic Framework. If you would like a copy of New Zealand’s ICT Strategic Framework for Education, please contact Katherine Davey: Katherine.davey@minedu.govt.nz
UK Access Management Federation Announced
November 30th, 2006. JISC and Becta today announced the launch of the UK Access Management Federation. The Federation represents the centrepiece of JISC and Becta's significant investment in developing and implementing next generation access management systems based on Shibboleth technology, on behalf of the UK education and research community.
The need for more secure and simplified access to e-resources of all kinds, the support of complex e-learning and e-research collaborations and the need to allow institutions to take greater control over access to resources have led JISC and Becta to devote significant funds to investigate and implement new technologies. Central to these developments is the UK Access Management Federation.
John Robinson, JISC Services Operations Director said, "The UK Access Management Federation is a significant development which will enable a much greater degree of security and granularity of service."
More information at: http://www.ukfederation.org.uk/
APSR Roadmap 2007
The Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR) has published its roadmap for 2007. After establishing some context with commentary on emerging trends it identifies four broad areas for action:
Full details available at: http://www.apsr.edu.au/publications/apsr_roadmap_2007_files/apsr_2007_roadmap.pdf
Oak Law Report
November 30th, 2006. The Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Report investigates a legal framework that supports open access to Australian academic and research outputs such as datasets, articles and electronic theses and dissertations. This report explains that with the rise of networked digital technologies our knowledge landscape and innovation system is increasingly reliant on best practice copyright management strategies.
The project is coordinated from the Queensland University of Technology and involves stakeholders from other Australian universities as well as international collaborators. At a technical level it aims to investigate provision and implementation of a rights expression language and will integrate with existing open access repositories at both legal and technical levels.
More information at: http://www.oaklaw.qut.edu.au/
Public Support for Science and Innovation
November 2nd, 2006. In a Draft Report from the Australian Government Productivity Commission titled ‘Public Support for Science and Innovation’, it is recommended that an Accessibility Framework for Publicly Funded Research Open Access be further developed through development of a “technical information infrastructure that supports the creation, dissemination of and access to knowledge, and the use of digital assets and their management”. The Productivity Commission is currently seeking feedback on the Draft Report until December 21st 2006.
More information at: http://www.pc.gov.au/study/science/draftreport/index.html
Open Archives Initiative Announces ORE
October 13th 2006. The Open Archives Initiative (OAI), with the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, announced a new effort as part of its mission to develop and promote interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE) will develop specifications that allow distributed repositories to exchange information about their constituent digital objects. These specifications will include approaches for representing digital objects and repository services that facilitate access and ingest of these representations. The specifications will enable a new generation of cross-repository services that leverage the intrinsic value of digital objects beyond the borders of hosting repositories. OAI-ORE will co-exist within the Open Archives Initiative with the Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), the widely deployed standard for exchange of metadata.
More Information at: http://www.openarchives.org/ore/
Recombination, Mashups and Remixing
In a recent short article for OCLC Research Lorcan Dempsey provides a succinct summary of how Web Services are being utilized and developed within the library space.
See: http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/004/research.htm
JISC-CETIS 2006 Conference Reports
The annual JISC-CETIS conference recently held in Salford brought together a range of presentations aimed at broadening the debate about how Web 2.0 and social software technologies might impact both formal and informal learning. More precisely, it focused on “the gap between learning within the (fire)wall of a well-established institution and learning on the wild web and beyond.”
For more information, Christina Smart and Sarah Holyfield have documented proceedings from this year’s conference at: http://www.elearning.ac.uk/features/conference06
A Mashup Stencil?
Scott Wilson has recently been busy with developing a stencil, or palette of easily recognisable icons, for making UML 2.0 diagrams a lot more understandable in the context of mashups.
See: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/blogview?entry=20061128164108
Upcoming Events
TENCompetence Workshop on SOA and Lifelong Competence Development Infrastructures – Manchester, January 11-12
This workshop aims to identify and analyse current research and technologies in the intersection of the SOA and lifelong learning fields, in the areas of their theory, application and use. “One compelling argument for moving to a service oriented approach (soa) in e-learning applications and learning supporting systems is the promise of better support for lifelong learning. The online availability of resources such as formal and informal learning opportunities, past learning achievements and a variety of learning communities beyond the single institution is a key opportunity as well as a challenge for individuals and institutions alike.”
More information at the workshop website: http://www.ask.iti.gr/tenc/2007/others/
Open Repositories 2007 – San Antonio, January 23 - 26
Open Repositories 2007 will continue the very successful format of Open User Group meetings for DSpace, Fedora, and Eprints, followed by general conference sessions that cover cross-cutting and overarching issues. This year, the user groups will partition their programs into Plenary, Technical Issues, and Management Issues, and the partitions will be staggered so that IT directors can attend all plenary sessions and technical staff can attend all technical sessions. The User Group meetings are open to all attendees.
More information at: http://openrepositories.org/
ICWS 2007 – Salt Lake City, July 9-13
The IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS) has been a prime international forum for both researchers and industry practitioners to exchange the latest fundamental advances in the state of the art and practice of Web services, identify emerging research topics, and define the future of Web services. ICWS 2007 is sponsored by IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Services Computing and will be co-located with the 2007 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC 2007).
More information at: http://conferences.computer.org/icws/2007/
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