2026-05-05
In the spirit of our Birthday Campaign, IAM4NFDI was our April spotlight. We took a deep dive into what IAM4NFDI has been working on, where it is usable already, and what their plans for the future are.
IAM4NFDI Explainer Video
Starting with the basics: What exactly is IAM4NFDI? IAM4NFDI is concerned with connecting and expanding existing and emerging Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems in a way that researchers from different domains and institutions are able to access digital resources within NFDI as easily as possible, including access to and exchange with external infrastructures and resources like the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). A decentralised, federated IAM is required. This way, users from approx. 400 German research and higher education institutions plus approx. 5000 home organisations worldwide – number increasing – will be able to access services and resources provided by the NFDI Community Authentication & Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI).
To get a vivid impression of how IAM4NFDI works, we would like to draw your attention to our explainer video. It helps you to discover how IAM4NFDI is revolutionising access to digital research resources! By connecting and expanding Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems, this initiative enables researchers across Germany and worldwide to seamlessly access tools, data, and services within the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI). Learn how the decentralized, federated approach ensures secure and easy integration with external platforms like the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), benefiting thousands of institutions and researchers globally.
Check out the video on Youtube.
IAM4NFDI is the first service successfully making it to the final phase of our funding process. At this point, the vision is to transition the established NFDI Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure (NFDI-AAI) consisting of the Community AAI services, the Infrastructure Proxy, and its Policy Framework into an operational, reliable, and sustainable Basic service. Building upon the successful integration of most NFDI-Consortia, this phase focuses on scaling the service, enhancing the user experience, and supporting the integration of more complex services through incubator projects. IAM4NFDI will continue to proactively integrate the evolving standards and technologies, especially those relevant for the EOSC AAI, to meet future needs of the NFDI in its role as the German national node. To ensure long-term viability, we are establishing a durable operational model with the service providers and want to shape and integrate into the future sustainable governance and funding strategies in close cooperation with the NFDI association and Base4NFDI.
Incubator Dashboard
Generally, the IAM4NFDI incubators aim to develop, foster, and mature new ideas in the field of identity and access management. The projects investigate new technologies that currently have no place (yet) in the services ecosystem of the IAM4NFDI project, including testing and experimenting with potential new features for existing CAAI solutions. An incubator project typically runs about 6 months and employs an agile methodology to enable rapid development of ideas. Throughout regular "Calls for ideas", project teams can apply to become an incubator project by filling out a template and describing their idea. If the incubator is approved, the IAM4NFDI team assigns a responsible CAAI expert to the incubator project who is the main contact point for the project team during the incubator cycle. Once a month the project members will give a short update on the current state within a sprint demo meeting and can exchange with other incubator project teams.
The incubator dashboard aims to represent a broad view on all developments in identity and access management within the different NFDI consortia and beyond.
But who actually curates the dashboard? The so-called dashboard members. They are project members of IAM4NFDI and/or experts from the different CAAI solutions. They evaluate new ideas and provide advice to the work package lead. Furthermore, they are responsible for reviewing activities at the end of each incubator cycle and providing recommendations on how to proceed. The incubator team presents their results regularly to the dashboard's and the wider community via monthly sprint demos.
A great asset of the dashboard are the filter options. Users can filter their search by topic, incubator status, cycle, and NFDI consortium or external incubator projects. A wide variety of topics is covered, namely Identity and Access Management, Standards and Protocols, Security and Privacy, Infrastructure support, Integration support, and Consultancy. Brief definitions of each topic can be found on the top half of the dashboard, enabling the users to fully grasp the content and significance of the incubator projects.
Furthermore, a timeline illustrates the history of past incubator cycles as well as current and future cycles. As you can see, cycle 5 is currently running and there is another chance to submit a proposal for an Incubator project in cycle 6, starting in August this year. Information on how to submit a new idea, including the template that needs to be filled out, is provided in a downloadable PDF. Don't miss out on the next call for incubators – follow our LinkedIn account to get a notification!
So, perhaps you and your consortium will take the chance of working closely together with IAM4NFDI in the final cycle!
Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure for the NFDI
IAM4NFDI provides an Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI) for the NFDI, called NFDI-AAI. But what does this actually mean? The NFDI-AAI connects and expands existing and emerging Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems in a way that researchers from different domains, communities and institutions are able to access digital resources within the NFDI as easily as possible, including access to and exchange with external infrastructures and resources such as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).
To give you some more context: The IAM team has built its work on successful previous (international) projects, including AARC and the EOSC-Taskforce on AAI Architecture as well as numerous German endeavours:
- Helmholtz AAI by HIFIS, which enables seamless login and cross-institutional group management to Helmholtz Cloud services.
- AcademicID by GWDG, which is used to offer all IT services of GWDG to education in Lower Saxony.
- didmos by DAASI International, which integrates expandable open source modules that can be custom tailored to infrastructures.
- RegApp by KIT, which is used to provide access to several educational and infrastructure services to academia in Baden Württemberg.
Following the three-phase-model of Base4NFDI, the IAM4NFDI team has successfully completed the Initialisation and Integration phase. The Integration phase focussed on the operationalisation of the components of the NFDI-AAI and on enabling support for as many NFDI use-cases as possible. As for the latter, numerous services have been integrated into the NFDI-AAI over the course of four incubator cycles. In this way, the vast majority of the research communities represented by the NFDI Consortia were able to connect to the NFDI-AAI. In addition to the incubators, the collaboration with the AAI operators of the EOSC EU Node and the LifeScience AAI were intensified through numerous meetings, during which preparations were made for the integration activities planned for the Ramp-up phase.
However, not only the technical aspects are crucial when building and sustaining a service of this kind, but also community engagement, including continuous outreach and training.
Therefore, we would like to draw your attention to a workshop the IAM4NFDI team has planned for June. This is your chance to hear directly from IAM experts about how best to integrate your services into the NFDI-AAI and how to implement login and authorisation concepts!
What? Meeting for users of and people interested in community AAI software offered by NFDI (AcademicID, didmos, RegApp und Unity). The workshop is organised by the IAM4NFDI team.
When? Thursday, 18 June 14:00 - 17:00 CEST
Where? Online via Zoom, you can join without a registration using this URL.
The workshop addresses the following questions and topics:
- What does a CAAI do?
- What can I do with a CAAI?
- How can I link a service to a CAAI?
- When is it useful to link a service to an InfraProxy?
- What’s the purpose of community management?
- Which policies do I need?
- Is there any news regarding my CAAI?
- Communication and exchange between users
The workshop will start with an introduction to the topics, followed by break out sessions for each CAAI.
The team is looking forward to welcoming you!
And of course we also want to share with you what’s next for the NFDI AAI. The IAM4NFDI team is currently in the Ramp-up phase, focussing on scaling the service. This means that IAM4NFDI will continue to proactively integrate evolving standards and technologies, especially those relevant for the EOSC AAI, to meet future needs of the NFDI in its role as the German National Node for EOSC. To ensure long-term viability, sustainable operational and governance models including funding strategies will be developed in close cooperation with the NFDI association and Base4NFDI.
For further information, take a look at the NFDI AAI Documentation.
