With 101 subscribers and over 260 services, the Australian Access Federation (AAF) continues to demonstrate its ongoing value and significance to the Australian research and education sector. 2016 has been another successful year for the AAF and a summary of its achievements is reflected in this Annual Report. A key highlight of the year was AAF’s inclusion in the draft 2016 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap, an activity led by Australia’s Chief Scientist. The identification of the AAF as the national provider for access and authentication highlights the importance of the role that the AAF plays in the national research agenda. The Next Generation Project was a strategic project which has enabled the AAF to innovate and advance the current federation technologies. This includes the development of a cloud Identity Provider (IdP) platform. 2017 will see the AAF run an Early Adopter Program, that will give eight participating subscribers an opportunity to shape the final product and be part of the early uptake of the service. The National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources Project (NeCTAR) funded the AAF to begin exploring the capability to become multi-protocol with the OpenID Connect standard. The AAF is one of the first international federations to advance in this space and will continue with further committed investment from NeCTAR in 2017. Global connectivity into services is a major goal for the AAF and the first phase for global connectivity was completed. This phase has proven that international connectivity is possible via eduGAIN and a program of further work will commence in 2017. The continued partnership with the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) capabilities, ANDS, NeCTAR, RDS and AARNet has seen the joint undertaking of the Data Lifecycle Framework Project. The aim of this project is to demonstrate value through a series of coordinated activities to support a whole of data lifecycle approach for the national research capabilities. In 2016 the AAF commenced as the Australian ORCID Consortium Lead. This has been an exciting opportunity which has allowed the AAF to expand its service offering to further meet the needs of the sector. PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2