National Identity Federations run and led by National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) may be part of many international initiatives, which increases the range of services available to its members.

eduGAIN is a service that gathers identity management federations that are partners of GÉANT (Pan-European Research Network). This organization is manager of a high capacity network that includes more than three thousand educational and research institutions in 32 countries through 28 national and regional networks of education and research.

MAGIC aims to foster the deployment of the platforms that enable mobility of people and seamless access to services by promoting the establishment of identity federations interconnected via eduGAIN.

Specific objectives are:

  • To provide technical knowledge and policy requirements to integrate new federations and European federations.
  • To provide technical knowledge to create interoperability and interoperation with new federations.

Why do Identity Federations need to be interconnected?

The existence of multiple AAIs and multiple identity federations makes it technically and administratively difficult when a user attempts to gain access to protected resources and services from other federations. The user must first be successfully authenticated by his/her home AAI and then authorised by the visited service provider. This is a problem that is tackled and solved by eduGAIN.