Open4:RegistrationExchange

Citizen access to online government services enables the provision of improved services and the reduction in cost of their delivery. These benefits cannot be realised unless the online citizen can be identified by the numerous central, departmental and agency systems involved in their delivery.

Identification is achieved through a process of registration in which a required online identity is defined e.g. John Smith, and authentication where a citizen provides some authentication credentials e.g. ID and password, which prove his claim to the online identity.

Different services will require different levels of identification, and, hence registration and authentication. For example, the confidence required in an identity when booking a squash court is very different from that when performing a benefits transaction. As a result, there is a requirement for different levels of registration, each of which requires a different level of identity checking to be performed.

The identity verifications requirements are defined through one or more policies. As part of the registration process, evidence needs to be collected to demonstrate that required checks did indeed take place, and a record of their outcome stored in a non-disputable form.

Once registered, the citizen then needs to be able to use the online service with a minimum of complexity. However, most of the information relating to citizens is held in multiple back end systems, which are run by a range of departments and agencies for particular, defined purposes. Also, in many cases a citizen registered within one local authority may need to use the services and systems of another. In practice, these systems will recognise the individual under a range of different identities; e.g. John Smith in one, Jonathan Henry Smith in another.

To be able to provide unified access to all relevant information, the registration process needs to link these different identities together. The citizen will then simply have to authenticate against one online identity and the rest will become available.

Access to the citizen information contained in the various systems needs to be controlled by the different system administrators through one or more information policies. These policies should also define what the individual system rules and requirements are for linking identities with those of other systems.

  RegistrationExchange provides a packaged solution for the delivery of tiered registration, authentication and identity management solutions.

  It provides:

 Policy driven registration services enabling service administrators to define registration requirementsIdentity mapping service, enabling the registered identity to be linked to existing accounts and references in back-end systemsInformation management services, enabling system administrators to define the rules for linking identities within their system and the release of relevant information.

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Policy & Identity Management Solutions