As part of the NEOLAiA European University Alliance, the University of Salerno is leading Task 9.1, a key initiative aimed at developing a comprehensive Digital Identity system for NEOLAiA participants. This initiative has a double objective: to establish a shared identity infrastructure among partner institutions, and to create a Digital Passport platform that will issue verifiable digital certificates for both curricular and extracurricular achievements across the Alliance.
Key features of the NEOLAiA Digital Identity Platform
The platform will help answer four essential identity questions for every user:
- Who are you? (authenticated user identity)
- Which university are you from? (institutional affiliation)
- What is your role? (student, faculty, staff, researcher, etc.)
- What have you achieved through NEOLAiA? (certifications and milestones)
This digital infrastructure supports secure, streamlined access to NEOLAiA services while enhancing collaboration, trust and transparency among member institutions.
From local to global: empowering academic identity with eduGAIN
A cornerstone of this effort is the integration with eduGAIN, a global interfederation service connecting more than 80 identity federations, more than 5,000 identity providers (IdPs), and more than 3,500 service providers (SPs), representing more than 27 million users worldwide.
Developed by the GÉANT research and education networking community in Europe, eduGAIN enables users to access multiple services through a single trusted institutional login. Users benefit from single sign-on (SSO), meaning they only need to authenticate once per browser session to access services from different institutions.
With eduGAIN, institutions manage digital identities locally (through their identity provider) and delegate access control to federated services. NEOLAiA partners are all part of national federations that are compatible with eduGAIN (e.g. IDEM for UNISA), making cross-institutional access seamless and secure.
NEOLAiA Digital Passport: certifying academic and extracurricular success
As a second step of the activities planned in Task 9.1, the University of Salerno will focus on the creation of a Digital Passport that will complement and enrich the NEOLAiA Digital Identity System. This platform will focus on the issuance of digital credentials, creating a key tool to facilitate interaction between Alliance members and to document their academic and professional achievements in an easily shareable and verifiable format. The NEOLAiA Digital Passport will allow NEOLAiA members to issue digital badges and certified credentials for activities undertaken in different work packages. These credentials will be shareable and digitally verifiable, providing reliable evidence of academic and extra-curricular participation.
By leveraging the eduGAIN infrastructure and exploring next-generation certification technologies, Task 9.1 is laying the foundation for a unified, digital-first NEOLAiA experience where identity, access and performance are seamlessly connected.
