How can institutions be confident about who is taking part in academic research, and whether their link to an institution is still valid? Australia currently has no common national baseline for answering that question.

This is one of the key issues raised by the Australian Digital Trust Community Group (ADT CG) in its response to the Higher Education Standards Committee (HESC) research security consultation. 

The ADT CG, which works under the OpenID Foundation, argues that research security and openness can go together. Its response shows how open standards can strengthen research security without slowing down legitimate collaboration, and urges HESC to focus on the following areas:

• A national baseline for identity assurance. This should cover everyone in research, from staff and students to visiting researchers and collaborators.
• Building on what exists. That includes the National Identity Proofing Guidelines, trusted international identity evidence and existing sector capability, rather than new bodies with overlapping remits.
• Open standards for trust across borders. OpenID Federation, OpenID for Verifiable Credentials, OpenID for Verifiable Presentations, FAPI 2.0 and Shared Signals can all play a part.
• Keeping humans accountable as AI enters research. There should always be a clear path back to a responsible researcher.
• Proportionate rules. Changes should be outcomes based, technology neutral and free of unnecessary burden.

Supporting Australia’s digital trust community

The ADT CG provides a neutral platform for professionals working on Australian digital identity and trust ecosystems. Its aim is to improve awareness and drive uptake of interoperable, standards based digital trust services. The response to HESC is one example of this work. It shows the group helping to inform national policy in an area where open standards matter.

The submission encourages HESC to build on existing capability. Implementers can already test their deployments with the OpenID Foundation's free, open source conformance tests. Any future HESC conformance scheme could draw on the OpenID Foundation's self-certification program and accreditation program.

John Scullen, Head of Trust & Identity Strategy and Futures at the Australian Access Federation Ltd, and co-chair of the ADT CG, said: "OpenID standards are likely to play a growing role in securing research, in Australia and in other nations. We encourage the Australian research community to build on these open standards, and on the conformance services already available to support ecosystems."

OpenID standards are already gaining ground in research and education. GÉANT, working with 80 research and education federations that represent more than 10,000 research organisations worldwide, recently selected OpenID Connect and OpenID Federation. They will support the move away from SAML and help future proof research and education infrastructure.

Governments in many parts of the world are also adopting OpenID for Verifiable Credentials. It is live in California and India. It is in development in Europe under eIDAS 2.0, and has been selected by Switzerland and the Western Balkans, among others.

The ADT CG’s full submission is available here. 

About the OpenID Foundation

The OpenID Foundation (OIDF) is a global open standards body committed to building trusted identity ecosystems. Our mission is to lead the global community in identity standards that are secure, interoperable, and privacy respecting. Founded in 2007, we are a community of technical experts. The Foundation's OpenID Connect standard is now used by billions of people across millions of applications. More recently, the FAPI security profile - built on OAuth 2.0 - has become the standard of choice for interoperable Open Banking and Open Data implementations, while OpenID for Verifiable Credentials specifications are underpinning a new generation of digital wallets. Today, the OpenID Foundation's standards are the connective tissue that enable people to assert their identity and access their data at scale, the scale of the internet, enabling "networks of networks" to interoperate globally. Individuals, companies, governments and non-profits are encouraged to join or participate. Find out more at openid.net.