Facilitators
- Gyöngyi Horváth (GÉANT)
- Evelien Renders (SURF)
Problem statement
European University Alliances are expected to work as one learning environment: enrol in a joint degree, move between member institutions, use shared tools and graduate without rebuilding an identity at every step. Few can offer that today.
The building blocks exist at European scale (eduGAIN, MyAcademicID, eduPerson and SCHAC, the European Student Identifier, the AARC Blueprint Architecture) but they were built for research. Adapting them to education, across very different alliances, is the gap.
Four things make it urgent:
- Not every institution is in eduGAIN, and the Identity Provider of Last Resort covers only student mobility.
- Some use cases need attributes that SCHAC does not carry.
- Alliances are implementing their own solutions faster than the field can respond. Local fixes do not generalise, and they leave the alliance exposed when the person who built them moves on.
- Alliance identity is converging with EOSC, while national digital identities and the EUDI Wallet arrive at different speeds. Sector identities stay necessary; how the two connect is the open question.
We are not trying to solve all of it. A standards-based approach that covers most of what alliances need beats a complete answer nobody adopts.
Use cases
- User identity (UC7), which underpins most core use cases
- Institutional identity (UC8), as the basis for federation
How we work
Two tracks run in parallel. TheOnline Clinics (UC7) give alliances hands-on support with the identity problems they have right now.Task Force 3 works on where alliance identity should go: common patterns, a minimum requirements set and a reference architecture. Live problems from the clinics become the requirements the task force works from.
We work through in-depth sessions with selected alliances rather than a survey, with identity experts in the room to separate what generalises from what is locally expedient.
Timeline and results
| Result | Status |
| Overview of existing services and tools for alliance identity | Delivered, July 2026 |
| Online Clinics (UC7) | Running from September 2026 |
| Use cases and requirements, with FIM4E | December 2026 |
| Documented best-practice and cautionary cases | December 2026 |
| Reference architecture for the alliance identity proxy | Draft December 2026, final February 2027 |
| Minimum requirements and best-practice guidance | February 2027 |
Where relevant, results feed into the REFEDS process and other coordination and decision-making fora.
Scope
We build on existing European identity solutions rather than propose replacements, and we recommend rather than mandate. We coordinate with, without reopening, ongoing work on the European Student Identifier, MyAcademicID and the FOREU4ALL identity task force.
Out of scope: attribute harmonisation across federations (REFEDS's work), platform-specific implementation guides for Shibboleth, Entra ID or Okta, and the licensing, legal and financial side of shared access to alliance tools.
Get involved
We are looking for identity experts, alliance practitioners with live challenges, federation operators and policy specialists.
Write to evelien.renders@surf.nl and gyongyi.horvath@geant.org with a short note on your experience and where you think you can contribute.
