Advantages and Opportunities

One single username and one single password

Federated digital identity allows users to access services and digital resources with a single username and password — their institutional credentials. The IDEM GARR AAI Service manages the IDEM Federation and supports organisations that wish to join it.

What is IDEM?

IDEM, the Italian identity federation of the research and education network, is a well-established reality that has existed for several years across universities and research institutions in Italy and around the world. Through IDEM, users can access numerous services and resources, such as digital libraries, journals, scientific publications, Wi-Fi networks, e-learning platforms, and electronic registers.

Who we are How it works

IDEM: benefits for everyone

Benefits for organisations

Reduced costs for user management and the development of new services
Centralised and uniform management of personal data policies
Through eduGAIN , access to thousands of resources and services

What is eduGAIN

Benefits for researchers, faculty, and students

Fewer passwords to remember
Simplified access to online resources, regardless of connection location
Personal data security

Benefits for online service providers

Reduced administrative burden for managing identities and credentials
Ability to expand their user base

Opportunities for students and researchers

Benefits for universities, scientific and biomedical research

Optimised management of user credentials
Simplified access to a wide range of services worldwide
Simplified access to international scientific publications
High levels of privacy and data security for healthcare
Standards shared across the international community

Around 100 institutions and bodies from the research and university community are members of the IDEM Federation, and 3,000 institutions worldwide participate in the eduGAIN inter-federation. Conducting research and studying means being able to easily access available resources and scientific publications while minimising the challenges posed by credentials and security issues. Users with an IDEM digital identity potentially have access to over 2,300 services shared on an international scale.

Benefits for cultural heritage and archives

Controlled access to digitised cultural heritage data
Simplified delivery of services and fruition of heritage collections
International collaboration and an expanded audience

The GARR network connects numerous important museum and archaeological sites. The IDEM Federation has proven essential for the shared management of access to online resources, ensuring privacy and security and providing access to services for users of different types and affiliations. From video conferencing to e-learning platforms, from libraries to high-performance computing portals, a vast range of resources are accessible in a unified way to federation members and their users.

Benefits for libraries and publishing

Databases, articles, and scientific publications made easily accessible to IDEM users
Simplified delivery of publishing services to educational and research institutions
International collaboration and an expanded audience

From its very beginnings, IDEM has had a privileged relationship with the library world, especially university libraries, including through participation in conferences and seminars on the topic (Convegno Stelline).

Libraries dealing with large numbers of users and numerous contracts with different providers can achieve, thanks to federated authentication, a significant reduction in administrative burden.

In the area of library services, IDEM has collaborated with the National Library Service (SBN), with the aim of making the interlibrary loan and document delivery service ILL-SBN (Inter Library Loan) more efficient and widespread, offering the possibility of authenticating library operators and readers (students, faculty, and researchers) of partner libraries using a federated identifier.

Benefits for schools

Access to e-learning platforms, collaborative tools, and cloud services
eduGAIN to share and collaborate worldwide

With a GARR connection and the IDEM Federation, schools become part of an interdisciplinary community that brings together universities and research, and that sees the network as an indispensable element for fostering collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and skills, enriching the educational experience, and facilitating student guidance processes.