It has been one year since the AARC TREE project kicked off, and in that time, the team has reached key milestones and delivered significant outcomes. Most importantly, we have made substantial progress toward the next version of the AARC Blueprint Architecture (AARC BPA) and its interoperability framework.

The AARC TREE project builds upon the current AARC BPA, published in 2019, and its interoperability framework, which consists of policy and technical guidelines. The AARC Interoperability Framework is governed by AEGIS, a forum for research and e-infrastructures operating AAI services that comply with the AARC BPA. Since its establishment in 2019, AEGIS has met monthly to ensure continuous development.

The AARC BPA has become the de facto best practice for the research and education (R&E) community. Today, it underpins not only the AAI of major e-infrastructures (such as GÉANT, EGI, EUDAT) and research infrastructures across Europe—such as LifeScience, PaNoSC, DARIAH, ESCAPE—but also the AAI for several pan-European initiatives, including Erasmus+ and the university alliances,  EuroFP (the EuroHPC federated platform) and the EOSC AAI.

Objectives of the AARC TREE Project

The primary objectives of the AARC TREE project are to:

• Develop a new version of the AARC BPA that aligns with emerging technology standards and supports evolving requirements.
• Update the AARC Interoperability Framework by assessing and updating existing AARC guidelines, making it easier for the R&E community to adopt them to build interoperable AAIs.
• Provide recommendations for the long-term sustainability of AAI services.

Key Deliverables and Achievements

Between March 2024 and February 2025, the AARC TREE team produced several documents in line with the project plan, including:

• The AARC Profile for expressing community identity attributes – defines a standard set of attributes for digital identities, as released by AARC-compliant AAI services. It includes subject identifiers, profile information, community attributes (e.g., group membership, roles), and identity assurance details, based on existing standards and best practices in research and education.
• Informational document on methods for establishing trust between OAuth 2.0 proxies – explores approaches for enabling trust and interaction between OAuth 2.0 Authorization Servers (AS) and Resource Servers (RS) across different domains. Trust is facilitated through Trust Authorities, which issue authoritative statements within an identity federation.
• Guidance for notice management by proxies – this work focuses on improving the user experience by reducing the number of clicks. By making notices machine-readable and signalling acceptance, the Notice Management guideline enables infrastructures and services to re-use existing acceptance and not to  have to intervene in the research flow
• The landscape adoption of the AARC BPA –  this work assessed the adoption of the AARC Guidelines (about 40 in total) among the organisations that deployed an AARC BPA AAI. Recommendations are provided to make it easier to adopt  AARC guidelines. 
• A use-case collection and analysis – it provides an insight on existing and new requirements among the e-infrastructures and research infrastructures that participate in AARC TREE and beyond. An infographic of the findings will be published shortly. 

The full list of documents can be found on the AARC TREE Website. 

What’s Next?

The work completed so far will inform the initial revision of the AARC BPA 2025 and the trust framework for proxies, scheduled for release in May 2025. This will be a significant milestone, that will benefit not only those directly involved in the project but also the broader community that relies on the AARC BPA.

Additionally, efforts will focus on creating a more visual and compact overview of the use-case collection and analysis. This will be included in the Compendium of AARC Best Practices and Recommendations, due by the end of the project in February 2026.

Finally, work is beginning on recommendations for a long-term strategy for AAI services in pan-European Research Infrastructures. To support this, a workshop is being organized and is set to take place by June 2025.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to shape the future of AAI interoperability!

ABOUT AARC TREE 

AARC TREE is an EC project funded under the HORIZON-INFRA-2023-DEV-01 calls.
AARC TREE has 18 beneficiaries (and two linked parties), plus two organisations in the UK and Switzerland that do receive national funding. 
AARC TREE funding complements the in-kind contributions from several organizations across Europe and beyond; these contributions ensure that AARC outputs remain relevant and continue to evolve across funding cycles.