Next up (post - very good - lunch)...it's Sean Meahan from UHI talking about Extending Institutional Identity into External Services and Communities.

He's starting off talking about the takeup of external services, a topic very close to my heart.

Opportunity 1: Serve our ("our": for instance HE) users better by giving them an externally useable ID

Opportunity 2: Give an integration point via ID to merge best of breed services into the institutional framework

(Sean is talking about the notion of an ID pipe which I like - the applications built at the end of the pipe are unimportant: the pipe just provides the means to identify...)

Opportunity 3: Allows for the holistic approach: life-long learning associations - services for students, but also gives opportunities for SSO for everything from infrastructural apps to web2.0 mashups

So what does this require: well, first and foremost a change in mindset. Insitutions need to stop being "bunkered" - a similar challenge which I've blogged about endlessly in terms of museums and Web2.0. 

What are the risks in this approach?

> id theft: well, says Sean - this stuff is happening already. Nothing new here

> external service goes bust: back it up!

> Yet Another Protocol emerges...: ....

> Users change their digital id: institutions already lose users. Nothing new here...

Sean finishes by saying that this approach fits a more user-centric Web2 world...

 
Final speaker of the day: Scott Wilson from JISC CETIS

Scott starts off talking about how education works as a system - how resource is allocated across students, how collaboration is brought into the equation. Ultimately his point seems to be that a vast amount of education happens outside the formal structures provided by the institution.

Where does that leave identity? 

Previously the idea that we (HE) had the technology and students didn't is of course different now: the technology balance has changed. Identity in elearning, Scott argues, is focussed around Individualization, Self-Organisation and Activity and not around more "formal" educational activity.

He also points out that technology is user owned now. It isn't threatening, but instead offers an escape route from escalating costs and liabilities. 

So where does OpenID fit in this landscape?

Scott talks about the fact that OpenID is a proxy: doesn't really verify a user: all it really does is asserts a relationship between an agent and a URL. This, Scott says, makes it a potential boundary mechanism which provides an axis of coordination between formal and informal systems and connects things together that do use identity.