JANET operates the UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research. A Policy Board ensures that the federation’s policies are implementable within JANET(UK)’s legal framework. Organisations may join as an Identity Provider (e.g. a university or local authority), or as a Service Provider (e.g. a publisher or content provider), or as both. The federation uses the standards-based Shibboleth software, which defines a common framework for access management and governance that is being adopted by education and commercial sectors across the world. More details of the federation and framework are available at

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/aboutus/committees/workinggroups/
federationpolicy.aspx and at: http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/

Shibboleth’s policy framework will also allow inter-operation within the higher education community. An illustrated explanation of how Shibboleth works can be located at http://www.ukfederation.org.uk/content/Documents/HowItWorks. Although Shibboleth has been designed primarily for secure access to web resources, work is ongoing to extend the framework for institutional authentication and authorisation.