One of the biggest issues government faces today is the management of user identity and access to information in an increasingly intergovernmental world. Chip Felton, CIO for the New York State Department of Mental Health, outlined how the state is tackling the problem. He chairs the state CIO Council Committee on Technology, which has set the goal of developing standards for a federated approach to identification and access management (IAM) that leverages the state's existing enterprisewide infrastructure.
A federated solution is a much simpler approach to identity management, when compared to a centralized system. In the commercial sector, credit card companies, such as Visa and MasterCard, use a federated approach when it comes to managing the millions of users who have credit card accounts. Most experts in the public sector see federated IAM as the best solution to growing demands for cross-agency and intergovernmental information sharing.
The standards that underlie these technologies include LDAP and SAML, which is a security assurance markup language, a sort of XML for IAM over the Web. SAML is a critical middleware, the glue that makes IAM happen. It has become the emerging standard that could make IAM a viable solution for state and local governments.
The benefits that a standards-based IAM can deliver include:
- A simpler way to grant and revoke user access to information
- A reduction in the number of sign-ons and passwords an individual must work with to access multiple systems and databases
- Greater security when it comes to user access to information
- The elimination of complex, bilateral data sharing rules and structures between different levels of government.
- There's no uniform process for establishing user identification
- There's no regular recertification of identifications
- There's no single identification process within an agency, which means too many workers are dealing with too many passwords
- Passwords are the most common form of identification and access control
- Some biometrics are being used for IAM
- The amount of information being shared across agencies and governments is increasing significantly.