The e-Framework for Education and Research is a joint initiative of JISC (UK) and DEST (Australia). Partners in the project now include the SURF Foundation from the Netherlands and the New Zealand Ministry of Education.
For any questions or proposed input into future newsletters please email The Editor
New Governance Structure
Last month, the founding partners, DEST and JISC, welcomed NZ MoE and SURF as full partners of the e-Framework. As such, senior representatives from the new partners joined members from DEST and JISC on the Partners' Strategy Board. The four partners took this opportunity to approve a revised governance structure and principles for the e-Framework, in support of this fast-maturing, international initiative.
Both NZ MoE and SURF are warmly welcomed as full members of this collaborative venture, enriching the energy, ambition and expertise which will secure success for the funding partners and the education and research communities they serve.
The new governance structure for the e-Framework became effective on 1 July 2007 and is currently available: http://www.e-framework.org/About/Governance/tabid/619/Default.aspx
Shared Service Goes Live New Zealand
May 26th, 2007. Education Sector Authentication and Authorisation (ESAA) -- a shared service developed for the New Zealand education sector -- has now successfully gone live. This shared service provides a fully functional authentication and authorisation service across seven selected education sector agency applications.
ESAA is a significant milestone of cross-agency collaboration that has come about since the establishment of the New Zealand ICT Strategic Framework for Education. As a core component of the ICT Strategic Framework for Education ESAA will deliver appropriate security and privacy mechanisms for education sector services and applications, and will support ongoing collaboration between and amongst agencies and education organisations.
Key Benefits:
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Improved information security, i.e. the role-based authentication system and ESAA policies will ensure that users only access those applications they are permitted to;
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Ease of access to appropriate education sector applications, i.e. a single set of user credentials to access a wide range of applications and resources; and
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Reduced compliance for education organisations and agencies, i.e. a cross-agency coordinated approach to authentication and authorisation, with a single set of user credentials to maintain and one point of call for support of this service.
For more information please contact the New Zealand Ministry of Education at: ICT.Sector@minedu.govt.nz
New UK Government Departments
June 28th, 2007. In a department re-structure the UK Government announced the formation of three new departments: the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS), the Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR).
DIUS will bring together functions of the Office of Science and Innovation from the former Department of Trade and Industry with further and higher education and skills, previously part of the Department for Education and Skills. It will be responsible for adult learning, further and higher education, skills, science and innovation. DCSF will replace the Department for Education and Skills (DfES).
More information at: http://www.dti.gov.uk/science/ and http://www.dfes.gov.uk/aboutus/
eResearch Australasia
JISC e-Research Programme Managers Dr Ann Borda and James Farnhill spoke at the eResearch Australasia conference at the University of Queensland the week of 26 June. They met the following week with members of the Australian Access Federation, Middleware Action Plan and Strategy, and e-Framework projects for more detailed discussions on these topics and to explore further opportunities for collaboration.
Presentations can be found at http://www.eresearch.edu.au/program
eResearch Mailing List
A new mailing list -- eresearch-announce@eresearch.edu.au -- has been created to facilitate announcements of events and activities that may be of interest to the Australian eResearch community. To subscribe, send a plain text message to majordomo@eresearch.edu.au with the words "subscribe eresearch-announce" (without the quotation marks) in the message body. The list is moderated and is expected to be low traffic. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Having Your Cake and Eating It: The E-Framework's Service-Oriented Approach to IT in Higher Education
The latest issue of Educause Review features an article on the e-Framework by Bill Olivier, the JISC Development Director for Systems and Technology. Bill outlines both the vision and some reflections on work to date: "To understand how the soa (service-oriented approach) can be part of a solution, one needs to have some idea of the vision that the service-oriented approach is intended to realize. The soa seeks to separate out the core functionalities needed by a number of different applications into a series of modular components, provided as loosely coupled services."
More information at: http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm07/erm0743.asp
Openness in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Access
June 2007. Anyone wishing to make achieve a better understanding of the "open" agenda in higher education should read this recent paper by Brian Kelly, Scott Wilson, and Randy Metcalfe presented at the ELPUB2007 Conference on Electronic Publishing in Vienna. The "open" word is of course used by all of us in incredibly different contexts and as the authors note: "For national advisory services in the UK (UKOLN, CETIS, and OSS Watch), varieties of openness (open source software, open standards, and open access to research publications and data) present an interesting challenge."
More information at: http://elpub.scix.net/data/works/att/140_elpub2007.content.pdf
OASIS Call - Search and Retrieval Web Services
June 18th 2007. OASIS has issued a call for participation in a new Search Web Services Technical Committee, chartered to define search and retrieval web services, combining various current and ongoing web service activities. The group will develop a web service interface specification including: search/retrieve; query; sorting; record retrieval; index browsing.
More Information at: http://xml.coverpages.org/OASIS-Search-WS.html#charter
The Role of BPM in SOA
In a recent web posting by Kurt Mackie on Application Development Trends the close link between service-orientation and business process is explored. He says "a service-oriented architecture (SOA) is supposed to bring flexibility to IT resources and lower costs by letting IT personnel reuse software components instead of coding from scratch. However, some experts have suggested that reuse -- the principal justification in most cost-benefit analyses for SOA -- might amount to just 10 percent".
The main theme and conclusion of the article is that both Business Process Management (BPM) and SOA are not only highly complementary but will likely become less distinct in the near future.
More Information at: http://www.adtmag.com/article.aspx?id=20905
SIMPLE made Simple
SIMPLE made Simple: An Overview of the IETF Specifications for Instant Messaging and Presence using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a new IETF Internet Draft.
The IETF has produced many specifications related to Presence and Instant Messaging with the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Collectively, these specifications are known as 'SIMPLE: SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions'. This document serves as a guide to the SIMPLE suite of specifications. It breaks them up into categories and explains what each is for and how they relate to each other. SIMPLE provides for both presence and IM capabilities. Though both of these fit underneath the broad SIMPLE umbrella, they are well separated from each other and are supported by different sets of specifications.
More Information at: http://xml.coverpages.org/draft-rosenberg-simple-simple-00.txt
Reports and Presentations
Presentations and reports from recent conferences and seminars:
Presentations from the 1st Australian e-Framework Implementer's Group
http://www.e-framework.org/Resources/Presentations/tabid/650/Default.aspx
Open Repositories 2007
http://openrepositories.org/2007/program/presentations
The Adaptable Repository (May 3)
http://www.apsr.edu.au/presentations/adaptable.html
e-Research Australasia (June 27-29)
http://www.eresearch.edu.au/index.html?page=64975&pid=57027
Upcoming Events
ECDL2007 Workshop: Towards a European Repository Ecology
Budapest, Hungary, 21 September
Why and how to repositories and services interact? The metaphor of ecology has been adopted to signal that the digital repository space is growing in both complexity and dynamics. This workshop aims to explore this theme and will focus upon conceptualising interactions between networks of repositories and services.
More information at: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/ECDL2007Workshop:Towards_an_European_repository_ecology
IDEA 2007 Integrated Education Infrastructure: 8-11 October, Brisbane
The annual IDEA event in Australia is a mix of open forum seminars and workshops and is focused on innovation and use of technology in education. IDEA 2007 events will:
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provide a national, cross-sectoral forum for discussing innovation and technology in education
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provide a showcase for Australian projects focused on technology in education
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share intelligence on emerging technologies that will impact education
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foster alliances and communities of practice around technologies used by the Australian education community.
More information> at: http://linkaffiliates.net.au/idea2007
For enquiries on the IDEA 2007 events please contact ideaconference@usq.edu.au
IMS Meetings: Queenstown, New Zealand, 7-9 November
Following e-Framework Partner Meetings, the New Zealand Ministry of Education is proud to be hosting this IMS Global Learning Consortium quarterly. his is a Learning Education Technology Leader Education Summit that will showcase common ICT services across the New Zealand education sector.
There will be presentations from IMS Global Learning Consortium, the Ministry of Education, and other major education agencies. There will also be demonstrations from the Regional Learning Impact Awards. The agenda for this event has now been finalised and can be accessed by following the link to IMS Global website. You are also able to register through this link. http://www.imsglobal.org/NZmeeting2007.html
November is a busy time for Queenstown so we recommend that you book your flights and accommodation early. If you would like to book your accommodation direct with the Crowne Plaza, please contact Tamara Carter on +64 (0)3 450 2677 or email functions@croweplaza.co.nz
If you require any further information please contact the ICT Sector Mailbox, IctSectoMailbox@minedu.govt.nz
Staff Changes
July 31st 2007. The Editor Jon Mason, bids farewell to the e-Framework initiative.
Having helped establish and subsequently led the development of the e-Framework website, Jon has provided valuable input and dedication to the initiative since 2005. Jon leaves the e-Framework, to continue his career as an independent consultant in e-infrastructure development. The partners of the e-Framework wish to thank Jon for his creativity and commitment throughout the early years of this international initiative.
The e-Framework Management Group (see item 1, 'new governance structure' above) now takes lead responsibility for the e-Framework website. The submission process to the e-Framework website is currently under review by the Management Group. Any enhancements or procedural changes will be communicated via the website itself and subsequent editions of this newsletter.
Meanwhile, if you'd like to contact a member of the e-Framework Management Group, email: editor@e-framework.org