Prior to the conference, delegates were asked to submit questions for this workshop.  The questions received are included here along with the respective comments.  Feel free to continue asking questions.  If you need a logon, contact "ct at rsc-northwest.ac.uk"

Q: How will Shibboleth will be better than Athens, and what are the possible problems with it?

A: That's an interesting question.  There is plenty of documentation available on the web about the benefits of both Shibboleth and Athens.  The primary benefit of Shibboleth technology, in my mind, is the capability of moving towards single sign on with learners using their college network credentials to access third party online resources.  There are many other benefits that Shibboleth can provide, which we will discuss during the workshop, including: the possibilities for sharing resources across a consortium of organisations; compliance with government legislation; etc... Have a look through some of the pages on this site for each stakeholder. 

In answer to the second part of your question I think if you were analysing the risks with utilising Shibboleth technology, the risk with greatest impact is the maintenance of the Shibboleth Identity Provider (IdP) server.  Athens is a third party provider of authentication: i.e. they host and manage the mechanism for authentication to online resources on their own servers.  Therefore, Athens is contracted to each subscribing organisation to deliver a service and will ensure little or no disruption to this service in-line with the contract.  In contrast, although it is possible for a third party to host a Shibboleth IdP server, the norm is for each college to host and maintain their own IdP server.  Therefore internal procedures need to be put in place to ensure that the server is seen as priority and that maintenance is undertaken promptly when required.  This could be done by a third party provider in liaison with the college IT Support or can be done solely by IT Support.  Although this change from a hosted to an in-house solution can appear problematic, it can also provide many more opportunities for systems integration and also cross-departmental working.  The more systems that are using the Shibboleth IdP server for authentication, the higher up the pecking order it becomes!

Q: I know what's in it for the LRC, but what's in it for the IT technicians? They've already got a set up they're happy with and they'd have to do all the work moving over - so what's in it for them? 

A: We'll cover this in the workshop and also on the IT Support page

Q: I would like to know a technical step-by-step approach to setting this up, or pointer to where this would be available.

A: In answer to your question, the best source of this sort of advice is the Information Centre on the UK Federation website.