If a university switches from SWITCHaai to SWITCH edu-ID, from a technical standpoint this means that mechanisms are implemented to ensure that the university status of each member is automatically shown as a SWITCH edu-ID affiliation.
Integration scenarios
What do these mechanisms look like? Universities differ greatly in how the personal data of their members is managed through identity management processes and processed in the IT infrastructure. SWITCH holds a detailed discussion with every university that wishes to integrate SWITCH edu-ID. Together, the ideal link between identity management processes and IT infrastructure is developed. In order to be able to support a multitude of integration scenarios, SWITCH already has numerous technical interfaces available.
Some universities will soon be fully integrating SWITCH edu-ID: for example, the University of Lucerne and the Swiss Distance Learning University will do so later this year.
Improved processes
There are around 600 employees, 300 lecturers and 2,800 students at the University of Lucerne. IT services are planning to gradually simplify their identity management processes and to introduce SWITCH edu-ID. In addition to the processes improved immediately, the potential of SWITCH edu-ID will also be exploited in the medium term in order to better manage alumni and students undertaking further training.
With 2,000 members, the Swiss Distance Learning University is around half the size of the University of Lucerne, and most of its 300 lecturers also work at other universities. They will benefit from SWITCH edu-ID, especially in the long run, as they will be able to combine all their affiliations into one identity. The Swiss Distance Learning University has used an internal reconfiguration of its campus administration and restructuring of its online student enrolment as an opportunity to introduce SWITCH edu-ID.
