AARC

The overarching goal of the entire AARC project is to create a common and secure authentication and authorisation infrastructure (AAI) for the European research landscape. This infrastructure will facilitate access to digital services and resources for researchers and institutions by improving the interoperability and security of identity systems and services. AARC aims to enable seamless and efficient collaboration between different research communities and institutions by developing common architectures, guidelines and training.

AARC I, the first subproject of the AARC initiative, laid the foundation for the development of a common AAI infrastructure. It ran from May 2015 to April 2017 and focussed on identifying the requirements and challenges associated with creating an interoperable AAI. During this phase, basic concepts and architectures were developed that make it possible to integrate different identity systems and services. Important milestones were the development of the so-called AARC Blueprint Architecture (BPA) and best practices, which formed the framework for further developments in the AARC project. A pilot programme was also launched to test the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed solutions. The 20 project partners included NREN, GÉANT, EGI, PRACE and EUDAT as well as specific virtual research infrastructures such as ELIXIR and DARIAH.

The follow-up project, AARC II, ran from May 2017 to April 2019 and built upon the results of its predecessor. The aim was to further refine the developed architectures and solutions and promote their implementation in various research networks. A central element of AARC II was the development of policy frameworks that enable the various organisations to design their own AAI policies in line with the general guidelines. To this end, other specialised infrastructures from particle physics, the geosciences and life sciences to the humanities were actively involved. Tools and training were also provided to support the implementation of AAI solutions in the respective infrastructures. AARC II also placed a strong focus on promoting collaboration between different research communities and AAI operators.

AARC TREE (Technical Revision to Enhance Effectiveness) extends federated access management by, among other things, integrating user-centric technologies that include access to federated data and services (authorisation). Existing capacities are consolidated in order to avoid fragmentation and unnecessary duplication of work.

During the lifetime of AARC TREE, the team and the AARC community will define common strategies for the development, implementation and sustainability of AAI for pan-European research infrastructures. This should improve access and sharing of scientific resources and increase interoperability between research infrastructure communities in different disciplines.

DAASI International was already actively involved in AARC I and II and is now also supporting the AARC TREE project in the further development of the AARC BPA.

In particular, DAASI International contributes to authorisation attributes and decentralised identity management by developing common procedures and guidelines for access control. These benefit various specialised communities and their research infrastructures. Target groups are also research communities, operators of AAI services and resource providers. One approach to access control is to promote the integration of services and resource providers into infrastructures and to provide a common understanding of authorisation models that apply to all scientific disciplines or communities.

In addition, DAASI International is working on guidelines for the use of decentralised identities and digital identity wallets. This includes topics such as distributed identities, verifiable credentials and their representation and decentralised storage. These topics are particularly important to support the EU initiative ‘European Digital Identity Wallet’ (EDIW) in research infrastructures, which aims to provide individuals with a secure way to store and use their digital identity credentials.