Link Affiliates

Partnerships

Link Affiliates manages and supports DEEWR's international partnerships targeted at the standards-based interoperability agenda. These include partnerships with JISC in the UK and the US Department of Defense. We use the partnerships to access international experience and advice on building education and research systems.



JISC partnership

Link Affiliates manages a partnership with the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK. JISC's mission is to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of ICT to support education and research.

DEST and JISC signed a collaboration agreement in 2005, the goals of which are to:

  • Inform strategic planning in their respective national contexts.
  • Optimise the return on investment by sharing where appropriate human and financial resources.
  • Enhance capacity to implement technical infrastructure in their respective countries.
  • Enhance staff development within the partner organisations through sharing expertise and knowledge networks.
  • Provide joint leadership in the development of international technical specifications and standards.
  • Develop links with vendor communities through the joint articulation of service needs.

The e-Framework for Education & Research Initiative

Link Affiliates manages a partnership with the international e-Framework for Education and Research initiative. The e-Framework was initially established by the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Australia's Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), which is now the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR). In 2007, the two founding partners were joined by the New Zealand Ministry of Education (NZ MoE) and The Netherlands SURF Foundation (SURF).

The e-Framework vision is to enable effective use of information and communication technologies to support education, research and administration.

The e-Framework:

  • promotes a service oriented approach which encourages re-use and flexibility of systems to meet business needs
  • collaborates to promote the successful development and wide adoption of open standards and flexible infrastructures
  • provides strategic planning tools for efficient prioritised investment in standards and interoperability technologies
  • provides a means to advocate at an international, national agency and educational institutional level to achieve the goals of the e-Framework

US Department of Defense (ADL) partnership

Link Affiliates manage a relationship with the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADL) through a partnership with the US Department of Defense (DoD).

DEST and the US DoD signed an "Intent to Cooperate" in 2006 that expressed a "desire to collaborate on the delivery of world-class technologies for education, training and research". The agreement also established an Australian ADL Initiative Partnership Laboratory that could pursue the following objectives:

  • Sharing research and lessons learned on the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) and related learning technologies;
  • Collaborating on the further development of technical frameworks and standards;
  • Co-ordinating and, where appropriate, collaborating on activities and projects of mutual interest, such as Content Object Repository Discovery and Registration Architecture (CORDRA);
  • Promoting and, where appropriate, collaborating on efforts to raise the awareness of partnership activities including the SCORM and CORDRA and related learning technologies;
  • Collaborating and, where appropriate, developing and maintaining deployment strategies of the SCORM and CORDRA and related learning technologies in Australia; and
  • Collaborating and, where appropriate, managing the SCORM.

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