e-Framework Initiative

The e-Framework is an initiative by the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Australia's Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) (the initial e-Framework Partners). The primary goal of the initiative is to produce an evolving and sustainable, open standards based service oriented technical framework to support the education and research communities. It is through RUBRIC that Australian participation in the e-Framework is made possible.

The e-Framework supports a service oriented approach to developing and delivering education, research and management information systems. Such an approach has the potential to maximise the flexibility and cost effectiveness with which systems can be deployed, both in an institutional context, nationally and internationally.

The e-Framework allows the community to document its requirements and processes in a coherent way, and to use these to derive a set of interoperable network services that conform to appropriate open standards. By documenting requirements, processes, services, protocol bindings and standards in the form of 'reference models' members of the community are better able to collaborate on the development of service components that meet their needs (both within the community and with commercial and other international partners). The 'e-Framework' also functions as a strategic planning tool for the e-Framework partners.

The initiative builds on the e-Learning Framework and the JISC Information Environment as well as other service oriented initiatives in the areas of scholarly information, research support and educational administration.