eduGAIN and GÉANT

eduGAIN was pioneered by the GÉANT research and education networking community in Europe. Development of the eduGAIN service was initiated in GÉANT 2 Project work, and followed up in the successor GÉANT 3 project. On 1. April 2011, eduGAIN became an operational service. In 2012, the eduGAIN service started to reach beyond Europe with the Canadian and Brazilian federations joining the service.

Development, operations and outreach for the eduGAIN service is currently supported by the GÉANT 4 Project. While the core eduGAIN service has reached its maturity, the focus is moving to enabling more supporting and added value services through enabling tools at eduGAIN technical site. As the privacy, trust and identity landscape is changing, more effort is directed to support campuses, research communities and federations to address new requirements and features that are being introduced. Harmonisation, evolving eduGAIN policy and best practices suite have become a necessity to further mature the eduGAIN service.

The future development of the eduGAIN service  and acceptance of members is driven by the eduGAIN Steering Group, which comprises representatives from each of its member federations around the world. This group is provided with secretariat support by the GÉANT staff.

As part of the GÉANT 2020 Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA), the project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 731122 (GN4-2).