Celebrating 15 years
For 15 years, the Australian Access Federation has been providing trust and identity services to connect and protect the research and higher education sector. We would like to thank all of our members and partners across the research and higher education sector for a fabulous 15 years. We’ve laid the foundations for the future, and look forward to continuing to provide national trust and identity services for our community.
Our history
Established in 2009, the Australian Access Federation (AAF) is Australia’s identity federation and part of a global network of over 80 federations around the world. The AAF is a vital part of the Australian eResearch infrastructure landscape enabling safe and secure exchange of information between education and research institutions both locally and internationally.
The Federation is a combination of technology and policy, which offers a trust framework. It enables trusted access with a single sign-on that allows individuals across many different organisations to collaborate and access online resources within a trusted environment.
Our approach has been collaborative and we’ve explored and built solutions for the community and with the community – from universities to national infrastructure providers such as the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, Australian Research Data Commons, CSIRO, AURIN, Australian Biocommons, Microscopy Australia and the National Imaging Facility (NIF).
Together we’re creating a secure and connected national research ecosystem, for greater research and innovation outcomes.
Our stories
Learn more on how we have partnered with Australia's higher education and research sector and our work with the national research ecosystem.
Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre
AAF has partnered with the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre exploring options to provide seamless and secure access to their supercomputing service using federated identities.
The Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre is one of two Tier-1 high-performance computing facilities in Australia. Its primary function is to accelerate scientific research for the benefit of the nation. Pawsey’s service and expertise in supercomputing, data, cloud services and visualisation enables research across a variety of fields including astronomy, life sciences, medicine, energy, resources and artificial intelligence.
Pawsey’s supercomputing systems play a critical role, for a wide range of research disciplines and features as an important part of many researchers’ workflows. This Incubator will raise the security profile of Pawsey and provide a single user account across their ecosystem. The Pawsey Incubator is a foundational building block in trust and identity for national research infrastructure and plays a critical role in the implementation of trust and identity across the sector.
National Imaging Facility
AAF has partnered with the National Imaging Facility (NIF) exploring improved access and collaboration for complex multi-site human imaging projects and medical trials using sensitive data.
NIF is Australia’s advanced imaging network, and provides open access to flagship imaging equipment, tools, data and analysis. NIF aims to maintain Australia’s world leading role in advanced imaging technology and make its capabilities accessible to all Australian medical researchers to solve challenges across research and industry. They enable research in areas such as mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), epilepsy and melanoma. NIF are critical to research translation, clinical trials and the commercialisation of medical products.
As one of AAF’s Trust and Identity Pathfinder Incubators, we have been working with NIF on enhancing their access — providing NIF partners, institutional researchers and external users with the opportunity for improved access and collaboration when undertaking complex, multi-site human imaging projects such as national clinical trials that use sensitive data.
Image credit: National Imaging Facility Advanced Human MRI capabilities at SAHMRI
ACCESS-NRI
AAF has partnered with ACCESS-NRI exploring options to provide consistent user tracking and reporting.
The Australian Earth-System Simulator (ACCESS-NRI) is a national research Infrastructure that supports the research and development of the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS) modelling system framework. ACCESS-NRI provides this service in collaboration with National Computational Infrastructure (NCI).
The AAF is currently in the discovery stage of an incubator with ACCESS-NRI, with the objective to develop a solution that can improve the current usage tracking approaches across all ACCESS-NRI resources.
Microscopy Australia
AAF has partnered with Microscopy Australia exploring impact tracking through persistent identifiers (PIDs).
Microscopy Australia are a consortium of university-based microscopy facilities that more than 3,500 researchers across Australia use each year. They aim to empower Australian science and innovation by making advanced microscopes accessible to all researchers.
One of the greatest challenges in research is to connect and report on distributed services and this incubator explores how richer reporting, impact tracking and usage data can be provided through ORCID iDs and PIDs across national research infrastructure.
Language Data Commons of Australia (LDaCA)
The LDaCA project’s purpose is to share significant language data collections using appropriate authorisation from dataset custodians. AAF has leveraged experience from other projects to implement policy and tools to manage access to a wide range of language datasets. The AAF’s role included interviewing stakeholders to understand and document dataset access rules, and deliver infrastructure to streamline and support the implementation of these rules.
Human Genomes Platform Project
Advancing human genomic research through federated identity and access management.
The Australian Access Federation (AAF) partnered with Australian BioCommons on their Human Genomes Platform Project (HGPP).
The HGPP investigated and prototyped a suite of services aimed at bolstering Australia’s capacity to share human omics research data securely and responsibly. Affordable DNA sequencing technology has revolutionised genomic research, allowing for the analysis of hundreds of thousands of genomes worldwide. This advancement has significantly improved the understanding of complex diseases, facilitated early detection and diagnosis, and expanded treatment options tailored to individuals.
As experts in trust and identity, the AAF played a crucial role in implementing best practice identity and access management solutions, to improve Australia’s capacity to access and share human omics research data.
AURIN - Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network
AURIN is connected to AAF’s Federation and is one of the most highly accessed services across the national research ecosystem.
AURIN has empowered researchers over the last decade with access to data and analytical tools. The research they enable has improved liveability in Australia, informed climate change policy, and revealed the economic implications of COVID on the Australian population. As a long-time member of the Federation, AURIN is easily accessible by others, enabling critical decision making for Australia’s future growth by policy makers, researchers and practitioners.
APPN - Australian Plant Phenomics Network
APPN’s connection to the Federation enables national and international researchers with open access to their state-of-the-art phenotyping.
The APPN is a national research infrastructure that accelerates the development of new and improved crops and sustainable agricultural practices. Their facilities provide automated image analysis and plant phenomics that address complex challenges for food production and environmental science. Federation scientists from around the globe can access their data and explore innovations for drought resistant crops.