NIH Announces InCommon Interfederation
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, is pleased to announce a Memorandum of Agreement
(MOA) for interfederation with the U.S. Higher Education’s InCommon
Identity Management Federation (InCommon). With this partnership,
users will now be able to leverage their existing accounts to gain
access to approved NIH online systems and services like training,
mentoring, and content resources. With 60 institutional participants,
InCommon uses innovative open-source single sign-on (SSO) technology
to provide a framework for its participating colleges, universities
and sponsored partners to share protected online information and
web-based resources. The federation eliminates the need for researchers,
students, and educators to maintain multiple, password-protected
accounts and provides privacy protection for individual users who
require access to online materials.
Dr. Jack Jones, Acting Chief Information Officer for the NIH and
Acting Director, Center for Information Technology, NIH notes, “We
are honored to be the first Federal agency to interfederate with
the distinguished higher education institutions and sponsored partners
of InCommon. Our goal is for researchers to use their institutional
identity credentials to authenticate to NIH online applications
and services. All NIH online applications have been assessed and
assigned one of four Federal Level of Assurance of Identity (LOA)
requirements for authentication. We are confident that this agreement
to trust and use each other’s credentials for applications assessed
as Level 1 online will expand and enhance our collaborative efforts.”
Ms. Helen Schmitz, Acting Chief IT Architect for the NIH adds, “We
are excited about interfederation with InCommon to create a common
framework for trust in support of scientific and medical research
and education. This important step forward for the NIH and InCommon
reflects the vision and the professionalism of many colleagues
across the NIH, Federal agencies, and industry partners. We are
grateful to Dr. Peter Alterman, Ms. Debbi Bucci and many others
who demonstrated exceptional understanding of the importance of
authentication and authorization systems to taking collaboration
to the next level.”
Mr. John Krienke, Operations Manager of the InCommon Federation,
comments, "InCommon is delighted to provide its university participants
with access to NIH agency Web resources. The InCommon Federation's
aim is to provide a trusted framework for partners in research
and education to grow their online collaborations in truly scalable
ways around controlled identity management assertions. Our work
with NIH will create opportunities for privacy-enhanced collaborations
to become standard platforms for managing shared resources."
About InCommon, LLC
http://www.incommonfederation.org/
Contact: John C.W. Krienke, Operations Manager
(734) 352-7095
jcwk@internet2.edu
The mission of the InCommon Federation is to create and support
a common framework for trustworthy shared management of access
to on-line resources in support of education and research in the
United States. To achieve its mission, InCommon facilitates development
of a community-based common trust fabric sufficient to enable participants
to make appropriate decisions about access control information
provided to them by other participants. InCommon is intended to
enable production-level end-user access to a wide variety of protected
resources. InCommon uses Shibboleth® as its federating software.
About the NIH Office of the Chief Information Technology
Architect (OCITA)
http://enterprisearchitecture.nih.gov/
Contact: Dr. Peter Alterman, Assistant CIO for E-Authentication,
NIH
(301) 252-8846
altermap@mail.nih.gov
The mission for the NIH enterprise architecture program is to
develop a comprehensive plan for IT support at the NIH. Given the
expanding scope and increased specialization of medical research,
as well as the need for innovation to achieve scientific breakthroughs,
NIH acknowledges the need for both conforming and diverse business
processes. OCITA’s vision is to establish an enterprise architecture
that will enable efficient business processes and information access
for all NIH Institutes and Centers (IC), and effective collaboration
with stakeholders within partnering institutions, by providing
the necessary common models, frameworks and standards, by which
to build and plan:
- Shared NIH enterprise systems.
- A secure and robust core IT infrastructure.
- Technical capabilities to enhance collaboration.
About the Center for Information Technology, NIH
http://www.cit.nih.gov/home.asp
Contact: Ms. Debbie Bucci, SSO Program Manager
CIT Division of Enterprise and Custom Applications
(301) 435-7546
bucci@exchange.nih.gov
The mission of CIT is to provide, coordinate, and manage information
technology, and to advance computational science. The vision of
CIT is to be a vital partner in the discovery of biomedical knowledge.
About the National Institutes of Health
http://www.nih.gov/
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), an Operating Division
of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the primary
Federal agency for conducting and supporting peer-reviewed medical
research and science. Helping to lead the way toward important
medical discoveries that improve people’s health and save lives,
NIH scientists and researchers investigate ways to prevent disease
as well as the causes, treatments, and even cures for common and
rare diseases. Composed of approximately 27 institutes and centers,
the NIH provides leadership and peer reviewed financial support
to scientists and researchers in every state and throughout the
world.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's
Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and
Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting
and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research,
and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both
common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and
its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
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