The initiative involved the state’s Department of Public Instruction, representing the state’s 115 school districts; higher education systems, including 16 public universities, 36 private colleges and universities, and 58 community colleges; and two pilot K-12 school districts, David County Schools and Rockingham County Schools.
Three content and technology service providers participated as well: NC Live, the state’s online library service; MCNC, an independent research and education nonprofit; and Virtual Computing Lab, which provides remote access to high-end computers for researchers and students.
The North Carolina Federated Trust emerged from those efforts. Leaders are examining ways to expand licensing for a learning object repository to K-12 schools, as well as how to add museums, zoos, and other educational organizations to the federation.
Lee Cummings, director of technology at Rockingham County Schools, said in the CoSN report that federated IAM could greatly help the district manage identities and access to resources. Every service provider with which the district did business required its own fields of unique user names and passwords.
“Database management is a burden,” he said. But using federated IAM is helping the district ease that burden.
K-12 schools face some challenges when it comes to federated IAM, including:
- Cultivating state, regional, and organizational participation
- Administering participation
- Developing legal agreements and policies
- Meeting compliance requirements
- Funding
- Technology infrastructure and technical expertise
The primer is a joint effort of CoSN, EDUCAUSE, the Internet2 K20 Initiative, the InCommon Federation, and StateNets.
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