By Will Sturgeon, 22 February 2006 16:35
NEWS
Leading public sector IT bosses have told silicon.com they would welcome moves by the UK government to adopt federated identity in order to provide the public with faster, more efficient access to online services. But one expert believes the government has been too preoccupied with the controversial ID cards project to consider such a solution.
Federation would essentially mean government departments would share the public's identities across their systems and authenticate against one another. This would speed the process of signing in and using multiple online services and would eliminate layers of administration.
Richard Steel, head of ICT at London Borough of Newham, gave such a system a ringing endorsement. "I see it as the way forward," he told silicon.com.
He said: "I believe there are major benefits to people being enabled to 'single sign-on' to government and other web services, while maintaining control of their own identities."
Steel added: "For me, federated identity, together with tiered authentication depending upon service context and sensitivity is the key to opening up pan-government services and driving service uptake."
Richard Hall, CTO at Avanade, said: "How do you deal with a member of the public who may have various identities within your databases? They may be a home owner, a voter, a congestion charge payer, a customer for street sweeping and all these identities may be separate."
That is indicative of the levels of inefficiency Steel, for one, says needs to be ironed out.
Alan Brown, director of information management and technology at West London Mental Health Trust, told silicon.com: "I am generally in favour of all organisations - especially in the public sector - being as joined up as possible.
"I can see the benefits in having a person's identity verified and certain demographic information already available. It would help in the delivery of social services, health, education, etc."
Brown said his experiences as both a public sector professional and as a member of the public have led him to believe federation can make for smoother, more efficient e-government.
He said: "I have personally submitted my tax returns online and the process of getting a username and password was rigorous and intensive and I would support the same 'identity' being available for me to access other services."
However, Brown expressed concerns that in an age of identity theft federation could play into the hand of criminals. "My main concern is that the rise in identity theft means that if someone's identity is stolen then the thief potentially has access to a lot of information in one go," he said, though he proposed developments in hard-factor authentication and biometrics could resolve such issues in the future.
Brown said he would also expect to be able to manage how his identity is used. "I would favour transparency in knowing which services have access to the identity and having an opt-out from some of this information sharing if I so wished," he said.
Pre-empting arguments some members of the public may bring up, Newham's Steel added: "I am sure there will be those who have concerns about 'big brother' and civil liberties - but I think that benefits include the fact that we will be establishing overt controls, rather than the many 'covert systems' - credit cards, mobile phones etc, that already exist."
Andrew Lloyd, VP security management at CA, agreed it is of paramount importance that governments ensure federation is not akin to open season on identities - and he said it should be implemented to ensure only relevant data is viewable by relevant departments and the user maintains ownership of their identity.
But with strong incentives for the government and the public, Lloyd urged the powers that be in Westminster to look at federation.
However he said there is "real irony" in the fact consideration of federation as a way to better-provide government services and public identity management may have been on-hold due to the focus on ID cards - a more controversial and more widely questioned identity issue.
He said major IT projects within the NHS, for example, are also likely to have severely hindered the process: "The government now needs to use this next time period to ensure joined up government is there."
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Isn't this exactly what the Government Connect initiative is supposed to provide?
The problem is that the project has so far over-promised and under-delivered.
The costs keep going up and it is very hard to make a business case that stacks up financially.
Large central government IT initiatives do not have a very encouraging track record.
2. Dave Jones
At a speech in Wales three weeks ago the head of identity management for the Home Office laid out just such a plan. It aims to provide a centralised identity management system that other govt departments and agencies can use to validate identities, and has been part of the ID bill for some time. Perhaps if the press and media (both print and online) spent some time reading and publicising the detail we could avoid being "wise after the event"!
3. anonymous
no no no! Inefficiency in goverment is a fair price to pay for making sure it can never become TOO controlling or a "surveillance state". Most people hardly ever deal with government online - a few times a year at most. Remembering separate IDs for that is as nothing in the overall list of such things most people have.
For the few who deal with goverment online regularly I would bet it is with few parts of it and in any event they can readily remember relevant IDs.
4. David Shaw
well who'd have though?
The main reason this hasn't happened so far is that departments are unwilling to let go of their own controls or let some other IT head/ web manager tell them what to do with their systems. The obvious thing to do is to have
One CRM system
One CMS
CSS standards set in stone
Branding set in stone etc etc.
Then customers, both local and national, would have their own accounts that provided them with the information they require on local services, and the facility to deal with national services through a standard interface. I wont hold my breath!
5. Ben Ellis
If local goverment education departments all over the country are considering it as an option under recommendations from BECTA ~ then it makes senses for central governement to seriously consider it. After all pupils are only little public people!
Shibboleth ( federated system) being developed by Internet 2 is being rolled in a number of Local Education Authorities in the country see one of the pilots at http://origin2.i2secure.org.uk/ if interested.
6. anonymous
Don't mistake some important points of federated systems.
Federated systems like Shibboleth allow the user (the public) to determine what information is released to the service. So all the system knows is what the user is prepared to release. If it is inadequate to access the service, the user will determine whether to release further information (possibly after some justification is made) or accept not to receive it.
What can be assumed is that the 'Ben Ellis' applying for this rent benefit is the same one who is complaining about the lighting in their street. The information released to both services will be different. In fact the complaint system will only need to know that the person complaining is a council taxpayer and lives in the street!
The other issue is that the user data is not centralised but controlled via ‘origins’, which are sort of home databases that can operate in a federated system. Who controls those ‘origins’ can range from private companies to the school you attend! However you can only have your data, which you control, stored in one origin.
Privacy and data control are the central planks of good federated systems.
7. Graham Sadd
Enterprises, public and private, treat personal data they have collected as their own. The National ID Card is designed to fulfil the needs of government rather than the needs and convenience of citizens.
The concept of CRM (where's the 'relationship'?) must 'flip' to SRM, Supplier Relationship Management, which places the individual and their identity at the centre rather than being scattered over 700+ databases with little or no control.
Ariadne Capital Journal: Through the Maze – www.ariadnecapitaljournal.com