The UK government has won an award from the Liberty
Alliance for its efforts in developing and rolling out federated
identity management solutions.
The Alliance, backed by leading financial services firms and
major IT suppliers, promotes the development of open standards for
federated identity management.
The UK government was among the winners of the Alliance’s 2006
IDDY (IDentity Deployment of the Year) Awards.
The awards recognise identity management deployments that are
delivering “real-world value to businesses, governments, citizens
and consumers around the globe”.
Deutsche Telekom, the UK government and New York State Education
Agencies (EduTech) were selected as winners by a judging panel of
international identity experts.
Federated identity management is designed to enable users to
access information and applications across different websites and
intranets using a single sign-on process.
The UK government’s award was for the UK Government Gateway
Authentication Service, which uses federated security to secure the
electronic delivery of government services to citizens across the
country.
It enables authentication and single sign-on in support of
joined-up government and has broken down technical silos that had
been hindering a transition to e-government.
The Government Gateway Authentication Service is designed as the
authentication server for all e-government services in the UK.
Nearly 8m citizens are registered to use it.
The gateway also provides authentication services on behalf of
other public-sector bodies, based on trust principles established
in UK e-government legislation.
It supports a “tiered” authentication scheme according to the
level of assurance provided by the user enrolment process and the
type of credentials issued.
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