PERSEUS Project

NB The original project finished in June 2006. JISC later granted the project a two-year extension (Sept 06 - Dec 08) to support the Access Management Transition Programme. The Programme's aim is to support institutions in the transition from the Athens access management service to the Shibboleth-based service. For more information, also see the UK Access Management Federation website.

PERSEUS (Portal-Enabled Resources via Shibbolized End-User Security) addressed the key challenge of  Shibboleth-based access management to information resources via an institutional portal, using the  uPortal Open Source portal toolkit. The project's aim was to deliver a generalised campus architecture for adoption by FE and HE institutions, supported by documentation at conceptual and technical levels, and reusable software components available as Open Source.

PERSEUS extended work started in the LSE-led  SECURe project, concluded in March 2005. The most important function for portal middleware is authorisation management to the hybrid collections of resources, for institutional learning, teaching, research and administration - resolving (with minimal human intervention) questions of 'who can access what'. In addition to testing the potential for integration of the  PERMIS authorisation management system with Shibboleth, the project evaluated alternative technologies for this function. In particular, the system initially developed at Stanford University under the Stanford Authority Project is favoured for further development by NMI-EDIT, and is now the subject of the Signet Project.

Commercial suppliers of key information systems to LSE supported PERSEUS, including:

• SITS (Student Records)
• WebCT (Virtual Learning Environment)
• Endeavor (Library Resources Management)

The original project started on the 1st of July 2004 and finished on the 30th of June 2006.