Edentity

Two individuals work full-time as directors of Edentity. They are:

• John Harrison founded Edentity in the year 2000, and has thus gained experience of the identity management (IdM) field from the beginning. He is well known in the UK as a proponent of user-centric approaches to IdM, has carried out related work for various public sector bodies, and has led several consortium funding bids. He is named inventor on two UK IdM patents, and speaks frequently on the subject, sometimes to an audience.

  Prior to his interest in IdM, he worked as an engineer for a large chemical company, as a management consultant, and as a developer and financier of power stations. He holds a first-class degree in engineering from the University of Bristol, and an MBA from ISA, the graduate programme of the French grande ecole HEC.
  

• Paul Hopkins joined Edentity in early 2008, shortly after stepping down as Director of Information Systems and Services at Newcastle University. In four years at Newcastle, he transformed the University's computing service, and was awarded a medal in the 2006 British Computer Society Business Productivity Awards for a major re-engineering of the postgraduate recruitment processes.

  He has led many collaborative IT projects between universities at both regional and national levels. He has been Chair of the Russell Group of IT Directors (RUGIT), Chair of UCISA Procurement Group and a core member of the HEFCE Shared Services Advisory Board. He was Principal Investigator on JISC-funded projects to develop Shibboleth-based Identity management middleware solutions, and also to develop a regional e-portfolio solution. Prior to working in the education sector, he gained over 25 years of IT management and consultancy experience in blue-chip companies, such as Procter & Gamble, British Gas, Courtaulds, Coopers & Lybrand and Thorn Lighting).

If you too are intrigued by the possibilities of identity managemement infrastructures, and have relevant skills to contribute, please do get in touch.