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Secure Financial Transactions Finally Become an E-Government Reality
The potential for full-service e-government applications that enable citizens to securely conduct financial transactions and access personal information may finally be realized thanks to new service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based identity management (IdM) systems, according to a presentation given by Dale Jablonsky, CIO with California’s Employment Development Department (EDD), during an Oracle OpenWorld presentation in November.
Attendees heard how states can build a business case for e-government IdM systems and saw how the state of California is implementing the technologies.
States like California are working to expand their e-government systems by Web-enabling core services in an attempt to free staff members to handle special cases where cultural, educational, and other barriers require personal interactions with citizens. But security shortfalls in the current Web applications block self-service activities, such as performing real-time financial transactions or accessing personal data.
To make these innovations a reality, a growing number of states are investigating security solutions that provide for single sign-on capabilities and user authorizations to make security unobtrusive.
Those goals are difficult to achieve given the fact that California lacks a single IdM system that spans all of its departments, Jablonsky told the audience. EDD collects $42 billion in payroll taxes from the state’s 1.2 million employers each year, and manages unemployment insurance claims, disability insurance, and job-search efforts for citizens.
It stands to gain from the effort underway in California to implement an SOA-based authentication architecture that will securely send standards-based Web services messages between state identity authorities and a central identity manager. The identity service maintains modules for access, authentication, provisioning, and auditing capabilities. After the service authenticates users, the messages then travel to the right department to process requests related to taxes, employment, health issues, and other areas.
Once fully implemented, the security system will manage identity information for citizens, state employees, businesses, healthcare providers, as well as local governments, Jablonsky said.
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