Government in talks over single sign-on

The government and the NHS are talking to education advisory body the Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc) about using its single sign-on system.

Nicole Harris, Jisc programme manager, says the eGovernment Unit is interested in adopting similar processes for Gateway, the government’s secure online authentication system.

The public sector has often had a poor record for sharing technology, she says.

‘At least we’re all talking the same language, which doesn’t happen that often,’ she said.

Jisc’s federated access management (FAM) system will launch in September and be installed in education institutions over the next two years. It is based on Shibboleth technology and provides single sign-on for multiple resources.

Harris says Jisc and the government need to explore how they can work together to develop federated systems, and says the NHS is keen to investigate the potential of using federated access to allow employees to work with education institutions.

‘The NHS realises it can plug in smartcard technology, but still have the potential benefit of working alongside higher education,’ said Harris.

Mike Davis, senior research analyst at Butler Group, said: ‘There needs to be a joining up and interconnectedness of systems. And we need to have FAM so the systems can be joined together.’

Increased understanding will be crucial, says Philip Virgo, strategic adviser to user group the Institute for the Management of Information Systems.

‘The key thing is how much the individuals managing identities are keen to learn from others that have grappled with multiple identities in the past,’ he said.

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