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
SUMs soon to be published
For those of you who manage to take a look inside the e-Framework website from time to time, please stay tuned! The Partners have been busy in recent months discussing and documenting the first round of SUMs. The first of these will be published during the next few weeks and by mid year it is anticipated that a broad collection from each of the main higher education domains will be available.
Leaving Behind a Legacy
March 1st, 2007. In a move that could be perceived as retirement, Professor Neil McLean announced that he will no longer be providing strategic advice to DEST on interoperability standards or engaging with the various Australian and international communities he has actively participated in for many years. This includes organisations such as Standards Australia, the IMS Global Learning Consortium, the Advanced Distributed Learning initiative, the Digital Library Federation, and many others. This also means he will no longer be serving as a member of the JISC/DEST Cooperation Partnership Board. While Neil will be very much missed he leaves behind him a legacy that has inspired many of us to value the benefit of focused collaboration, to meet the challenges of changing political landscapes, and to persevere with building IT infrastructure that is both interoperable and sustainable.
Thank you, Neil!
SURF publishes Best Practices
March 14th, 2007. The SURF Foundation published a report that provides an overview of “SOA readiness” in Dutch higher education. Based upon an extensive consultation process the report makes recommendations that outline a dual “bottom-up” and “top-down” strategy for improving interoperability in Higher Education IT infrastructure. It also identifies a strong need for developing clear guidelines.
More information at: http://www.surf.nl/eng/download/SOA_state_v1.0_en.pdf
National Library of Australia publishes plan for SOA
The National Library of Australia (NLA) has published a report that aims to define the IT architecture needed to support the management, discovery and delivery of the NLA’s collections during the next three years. The report identifies a new framework for building digital library services that includes
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Implementing a service-oriented architecture
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Adopting a single-business approach
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Considering open-source solutions when these are functional and robust
More information at: http://www.nla.gov.au/dsp/documents/itag.pdf
NZ Ministry of Education Modeling the Business Architecture of Education Sector
The New Zealand Ministry of Education has been modelling the business architecture of the education sector to facilitate the development of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based systems and determined three basic models which support this approach:
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The Business Element Model (BEM) which gives a graphical representation of the business and its relationships with its Providers and Customers
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BEMs are an informing tool and a resource to support planning and further development. They provide a single graphical representation of a business. This gives a consistent ‘big picture’ that allows anyone working in the business to see how the individual components of a business relate and depend on each other
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The Business Component Framework (BCF) which provides a basic framework for the business processes indicated by the BEM
BCFs provide a link between the BEM, the BSM (see below) and the implementation of common services.
The Business Service Model (BSM) which provides an SOA oriented model of the business services required to support the BEM and BCF and, in so doing, starts the identification of common business processes.
BSMs show the interconnectedness of the different applications in a business. This provides an excellent resource when future application development is being considered, particularly an organisation’s SOA development. By understanding the necessary sharing of data and services, a business can ensure that, in future developments, the appropriate connections are either directly made or the bolt holes created. This will ensure that business applications have high levels of interoperability and that duplication of work is kept to a minimum.
Significant progress has been made in developing these models (and the methodology which they use) for New Zealand’s education sector; if you would like to know more about this work, please contact Katherine Davey (N.Z Ministry of Education): Katherine.davey@minedu.govt.nz
Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate
January 14th 2007. The European research and academic community has demonstrated overwhelming support for the European Commission's proposed Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate (A1). A petition, launched jointly on January 14th 2007 by research organisations in a number of European countries, has drawn over 20,000 signatures from Europe and worldwide in support of the EC's proposal. The response includes almost 1,000 institutional signatories from National Academies of Sciences, Universities, Rectors' conferences, Learned Societies, national and private research funding councils, and industries that apply research.)
In conjunction with the petition, a separate poll has been conducted of the EC Open Access Mandate's specific target constituency. The administrators of currently active EU FP6 projects were asked to register a vote FOR or AGAINST open access to research results. The result was overwhelming: 85.8% in favour of open access, 14.2% against (based on a healthy 8.22% response rate from 2652 email invitations to vote).
Previous research has demonstrated the increased impact that Open Access to Research Results offers the research industry. The petition and the poll demonstrate that Open Access now receives broad-based and popular support as a mainstream requirement of the European research industry.
More information at: http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=European%20Commission
OASIS Approves New Web Service Security Standards
March 27th 2007. OASIS announces that its members have approved WS-SecureConversation version 1.3 and WS-Trust version 1.3 as OASIS Standards, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. Developed by the OASIS Web Services Secure Exchange (WS-SX) Technical Committee, these new standards define policies and extensions to WS-Security that enable the trusted exchange of multiple SOAP messages.
“WS-Trust provides methods for issuing, renewing, and validating security tokens as well as establishing, detecting, and brokering trust relationships. WS-SecureConversation allows security contexts to be created and key material to be exchanged more efficiently. Together, WS-Trust and WS-SecureConversation can increase the overall performance and security of exchanges”.
More Information at: http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis-news-2007-03-27.php
JISC Report on Web 2.0
February 2007. The latest JISC TechWatch report argues that Web 2.0 is more than just a set of new technologies and services. It identifies six powerful ideas that are changing the way some people interact, although acknowledges that these ideas are not necessarily the preserve of ‘Web 2.0’and are natural outcomes of the “power of the network”.
The report argues that by separating out the discussion of Web technologies (ongoing Web development overseen by the W3C), from the more recent applications and services (social software), and attempts to understand the manifestations and adoption of these services (the ‘big ideas’), decision makers will find it easier to understand and act on the strategic implications of ‘Web 2.0’.
More Information at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/techwatch/tsw0701b.pdf
Upcoming Events
The Adaptable Repository – Sydney, May 3
A one-day workshop on new challenges and opportunities for repositories hosted by two leading higher education IT infrastructure development projects in Australia – the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR) and Australian Research Repositories Online to the World (ARROW).
Topics explored will include:
- open access
- research reporting
- RQF (Research Quality Framework)
- the researcher's e-portfolio
- managing complex objects and data sets
- electronic publishing of books and journals
- collection management and display
More information at: http://www.apsr.edu.au/adaptable/index.htm
The 20th Open Grid Forum: OGF20 – Manchester, May 7-11
OGF20 is hosted by UK e-Science and the University of Manchester. At OGF20, more than 800 Grid enthusiasts from around the globe will gather for one week to further Grid standards development and discuss best practices in e-Science. The event also features a two day enterprise program, led by the Grid Computing Now! KTN, that will focus on real world case studies and practical Grid solutions.
More information at: http://www.ogf.org/OGF20/events_ogf20.php
ETD2007: Added Value for e-Theses – Uppsala, June 13-16
The 10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations offers scope for an exchange of experience and consolidation of cooperation in the field of electronic theses and dissertations at local, national and international levels. Under the general theme "Added Value for E-theses", ETD 2007 is organised around two main themes: "Integrating ETDs with institutional processes and practices" and "Value added services".
The themes of the conference call for reflection on opportunities for joint efforts among various players in the production and information chain, both inside and outside our universities.
More information at: http://epc.ub.uu.se/etd2007/abstracts.html
e-Research Australasia 2007 – Brisbane, June 27-29
The conference is hosted by the University of Queensland, supported by the Australian Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), and is an initiative of the MAPS (Middleware Action Plan and Strategy) and APSR (Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories) projects. It will feature speakers, workshops, posters, and demonstrations from the Australian and international e-Research community and will focus on:
If you are interested in giving a presentation, poster, or workshop, please advise the Program Committee by sending email to eresearch2007@uq.edu.au
More information at: http://www.middleware.edu.au/era2007
Libraries Without Walls 7: Exploring Anywhere, Anytime Delivery of Library Services – Lesvos, Greece, September 14-18
From their beginnings in 1995, the Libraries without Walls conferences have mapped a major change in the practice of librarianship. While library services are still concerned to provide users with physical access to their buildings, electronic access, often from remote locations, is becoming ever more dominant. Library services are being integrated into virtual learning, research and personal environments. Papers presented at previous LWW conferences have mapped this change and provided examples of how libraries are delivering their services whenever and wherever their users need them.
Call for Papers: closes March 2
More information at: http://www.cerlim.ac.uk/conf/lww7/
Reflections on Open Repositories 2007
While presentations from Open Repositories 2007 are not yet available on the website itself there is a useful resource at: http://del.icio.us/tag/or2007
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/