Towards interconnecting the Nordic identity federations

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to outline considerations for trust management between established national identity federations in education and research. It also aims to discuss policy issues related to cross‐federation and to compare existing academic identity federations. The paper seeks to investigate Nordic national federations and to introduce the Kalmar Union as a means of interconnecting the Nordic federations.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper discusses various issues in the policy of a cross‐federation, and suggests further work for developing the Kalmar Union Charter.

Findings

The paper finds that the technology used in federated identity management becomes more and more standardised, the technological challenges in making cross‐federations become fewer. Therefore, the remaining obstacles seem to be missing legislative know‐how, causing lack of sound information for decision makers. Thus, in an identity federation, trust establishment is, in the first place, a policy issue, not a technical one.

Originality/value

In recent years, several identity federations have been established in higher education around the world. Existing federations have a national scope, but the need for cross‐border services has led to the first interconnects of national federations. The Kalmar Union has been established as a cross‐federation of the Nordic academic identity federations.

Citation

Tveter, W.M., Melve, I. and Linden, M. (2007), "Towards interconnecting the Nordic identity federations", Campus-Wide Information Systems, Vol. 24 No. 4, pp. 252-259. https://doi.org/10.1108/10650740710834635