Leveraging National Federated Identity Services

Abstract

The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) is an interactive, trusted digital repository for social and cultural content held by Irish institutions. By providing a central internet access point and interactive multimedia tools, the DRI will facilitate engagement with contemporary and historical data, allowing the public, students, and scholars to research Ireland’s cultural heritage and social life in ways never before possible.

As a national infrastructure DRI must be accessible to a broad range of user, from cross-institutional research teams, to casual users from the general public. To reduce the administrative burden on the repository it would be highly desirable if accounts could be dynamically provisioned, rather than requiring the intervention of an administrator. Similarly removing the ongoing maintenance of accounts would aid in the long-term sustainability of the infrastructure.

For these reasons DRI has leveraged an existing national federated access management system, Edugate. Through this service users can access any Edugate enabled online resource using the credentials issued to them by their home institution.

The integration of this service has opened DRI to a large number of potential users, without the expected increase in administrative overhead.