Introduction

To become an Australian Access Federation subscriber an organisation starts with determining eligibility, selecting a suitable subscription plan and completing a subscription form. On approval of a subscription application, an organisation will need to ensure it complies with the Federation Rules, pay the annual subscription fee and connect services to the AAF. The AAF is available to guide the subscriber process.

Details

Eligibility

Subscription to the Australian Access Federation is open to any organisation which meets one of the following criteria:

tertiary or vocational education institution,
government, commercial research institutions or not-for-profit entities,
service organisations delivering products or services to the education and research sector,
any other entity approved by the AAF Ltd Executive Committee.

A subscriber must be a legal entity or have a lead agent or similar, represent them to become subscribers.

Subscription plans

The following subscription plans support different types of organisations.

Enterprise

The Federation Enterprise model is for a whole-of-organisation/institution or large enterprises that undertake or support education, research or research and development.

Team

The Federation Team model is for part-of-organisation or large enterprises that undertake or support education, research or research and development.

Rapid Starter

The Rapid Starter plan is for small organisations that undertake or support education, research or research and development. AAF operates your connection to the Federation as a managed service.

Publisher

The Federation Publisher model is for vendors that provide products or services which support education, research or research and development.

Approval

The AAF will review subscription applications to ensure eligibility criteria and the chosen plan are appropriate. The AAF will issue an invoice for the subscription and once paid will enable access to the AAF Federation Manager. Access to the Federation tool permits an organisation to offer services to the Federation and its subscribers. User access to services and products depends on the access controls implemented on the service. If a service is an identity provider, that service enables an organisation’s members to access other services in the Federation.

Subscribers must submit a Compliance Statement annually that asserts that their organisation has self-assessed as being compliant with the Federation Rules.

Testing and Trialing Federation Services

It is possible to test and trial Federation services in AAF’s Test environment without a subscription plan in place. The Test environment is ideal for experimentation, troubleshooting activity, and to gain experience in connecting to Federation services.

Guidance and Support

The AAF Support Portal contains several guides to the federation components. These guides cover:

the Federation Manager which permits the registration of service and identity providers,
the Identity Provider service which are the user authentication end-points,
the Service Providers which represent service end-points.

The AAF Support Team is available to offer help and additional guidance to deployers and software developers. Access to this team is dependent on an existing subscriber support contract or if trailing the AAF services, availability and subscriber support demand.