The University of Queensland is leading the way to establish IT standards to support collaboration between Australian universities.
As part of a recent Department of Education, Science and Training Strategic Infrastructure Initiative (SII) grant, UQ will lead two projects, worth $1.2 million, looking at how to link E-research and what software, services will underpin the collaborative use of computer systems and networks in Australian universities.
The SII is a Federal Government program which aims to put in place the foundations for national research infrastructure to support global and national collaborations of people and shared resources.
Nick Tate, Director of Information Technology Services and AusCERT at UQ, will lead the two projects and said they would allow the University’s expertise in these areas to be integrated with the expertise of others around the country and in New Zealand.
“What we are doing is setting the standards for cross collaboration across Australian universities,” Mr Tate said.
“This will allow for systems and networks that are easily accessed and adapted, no matter where you are.”
“We want to make it easy for researchers and academics from different universities to work together without having to be computer experts to do it.”
Mr Tate said the first project, the Middleware Action Plan and Strategy, would identify the software and services (the middleware) that are currently used in Australia across a wide range of networks and computer systems.
From there a strategy would be developed focusing on providing new services that can be shared across the education and research sectors.
Partners in this project include Monash University, Australian National University, Macquarie University, Council of Australian Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT), Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL), AARNet Pty Ltd and GrangeNet.
The second project, E-security Framework for Research, seeks to establish an E-security framework to foster collaboration and enable the secure sharing of resources and research infrastructure within Australia and with international partners.
“Secure access and the authentication and authorisation of researchers, who access services and infrastructure across global networks, are fundamental building blocks for e-research,” Mr Tate said.
“We want to have a system where a researcher can get information from another university, without having to use different security measures to access it.
“If they have logged in securely at UQ, then they should be able to get direct access to what they need at another university.”
Partners in this project include Macquarie University, Council of Australian Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT), Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC) and AARNet Pty Ltd.
UQ is also a partner in two other SII projects, the $3.5 million BlueNet: The Australian Marine Science Data Network, led by the University of Tasmania and the $3.2 million Dataset Acquisition, Accessibility and Annotation e-Research Technology Project (DART) led by Monash University.
Media inquiries: Nick Tate, ITS Director (07 3365 3521) or Andrew Dunne at UQ Communications (07 3365 2802).
