US could learn much from Canadian government's identity management initiative
In light of the U.S. government’s NSTIC (National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace), which may or may not become a victim of the U.S. Congress’ budget-cutting axes this fall, I’d thought we go take a look at another government initiative that might provide a blueprint for how NSTIC could proceed.
The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat recently released the final version of a document called “Federating Identity Management in the Government of Canada: A Backgrounder.” It notes, “How identity information is collected, used, managed, and secured is of critical interest to leaders in the public sector charged with protecting the rights of citizens, ensuring privacy, and ensuring national security and public safety,” which sounds like a good paraphrasing of the driving principals behind NSTIC.
BACKGROUND: NSTIC director: ‘We’re trying to get rid of passwords’
The Canadian initiative is smaller and more focused than that in the U.S., concentrating as it does on government and citizen interactions. The general ideas are much the same, though, differing really only in scale.
The Canadian study also sets out what it calls “Guiding principles for federating identity management”:
• Achieve consensus through accepted, mutually respected assurances (of credential or identity), risk levels, and accountabilities.
• Respect program accountability.
• Let the citizen decide.
• Enable interoperability.
• Promote a fair and competitive marketplace.
These are certainly principles which those formulating NSTIC should abide by.
The report ends with a conclusion that should be part of every IdM planning document: “Traction can be gained with minimal impediment by approaching federation in a planned, incremental fashion. Effort will be required in order to understand how to formally interact with one another to respond to cultural, political, and legal challenges to federating identity.”
If you’re working on NSTIC this should be required reading. For the rest of you, it should provide an eye-opening experience to the possibilities of federation and how best to accomplish that goal. Get your own copy from Canada’s Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and see for yourself.
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