IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

MSUFCU in East Lansing has deployed centrally managed software and readers from DigitalPersona Inc. of Redwood City, Calif., to eliminate the need to remember and type in separate strong passwords, the company and credit union said.

There is a change taking place around identity and credentialing in the enterprise and government markets. Identity is now an enterprise business requirement with its own infrastructure, policy and budget. Identity makes use of open standards to achieve interoperability and requires the highest level of assurance. The change is that physical access control and other enterprise applications no longer issue credentials. Instead, they use a common digital identity of digital certificates and the 21st century utility of the Internet as well as private networks.

For many years, Bergen County, New Jersey has had many problems in providing the Department Human Services (DHS) specific numbers as to how many homeless people receive social services such as food, medicine and shelter.

NIST Special Publication 800-63 follows up guidelines from the Office of Management and Budget defining four levels of authentication assurance for federal IT systems.

In guidance issued to federal agencies today, OMB Director Joshua Bolten outlined steps to assess system risks, identify their proper assurance level and select the right technology to implement it. Today's release updates earlier guidance under the Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA) and provides direction for the implementation of Section 203 of the E-Government Act.

But Principal Steve Payne said several parents have called him to say they weren't comfortable with the practice, and one was particularly upset that the school scanned and stored students' biometric information last week without informing parents first.

"That was an oversight on my part," Payne acknowledged. "I apologized."

When the auditor/controller-recorder’s office of San Bernardino County, Calif., tried to improve its information technology security through requiring complex passwords with upper- and lower-case letters and special characters, the plan backfired, IT chief Patrick Honny recalled.

“We had situations, especially after a weekend or a holiday, when our help-desk requests went through the roof,” Honny said.

To avoid forgetting the long passwords, some users were writing them down, a basic security no-no.

The latest: A fingerprint scanning system, approved this month for testing at the Desert Sands district, northeast of San Diego. Students will be scanned as they get on and off the bus.

"Kids get lost. It happens in every school district, every year," says John DeVries, president of Global Biometrics Security, which developed the Biometric Observation Security System (BOSS) that's being tested.

This is part of "Secure Communities" -- ICE's comprehensive strategy to improve and modernize the identification and removal of immigrants convicted of a crime from the United States, according to a press release from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Kirit Amin, chief information officer with the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, said that fingerprints are fine, but if the government really wants to do a bulletproof job of recording and verifying someone's identity, the solution is as close as the eyes on your face.

"I love iris," Amin said during AFCEA Law Enforcement IT Day conference in Bethesda, Md. Wednesday, referring to the process by which a photograph is taken of the unique pattern of structures inside the cornea.

The Web-based Centralized Authentication and Authorization Facility provides a common platform to verify user credentials so that each application doesn’t have to duplicate the function.

On Tuesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began using a federal information sharing capability in all West Virginia counties that uses biometrics to identify aliens, both lawfully and unlawfully present in the United States, who are booked into local law enforcement’s custody for a crime. This information sharing capability is part of Secure Communities—ICE’s comprehensive strategy to improve and modernize the identification and removal of aliens convicted of a crime from the United States.

All West Virginia State Police detachments and seven other law enforcement agencies statewide have LiveScan fingerprint technology, which digitally scans fingerprints when a suspect is booked for a crime, said Sgt. J.E. Skidmore with the West Virginia State Police.

The vision of the group is: “To improve the trustworthiness and security of online transactions by facilitating the establishment of interoperable trust frameworks and implementation of improved authentication technology and processes for all online transaction participants, across federal, civil and private sectors.”

When fully implemented, the National Authentication Framework (NAF) will enable users to access government services using a single electronic identity, bringing ease and convenience to citizen transactions with the government.

MIC Authority of IT Application Director General, Dr. Nguyen Thanh Phuc said in an official statement, “Technology plays a key role for Vietnam to become a strong nation in IT and in eGovernment implementation. We are deeply committed to the development of a reliable IT infrastructure as it advances the use of technology in government agencies, which improves productivity and reduces operational costs.”

Vietnam is pushing ahead with its plan of developing digital governance as the country’s Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) has released a draft decree defining guidelines on digital ID and authentication, including the use of biometrics.

According to a blog article written by prominent Vietnamese lawyers Yee Chung Seck and Manh Hung Tran, and published on Global Compliance News, the new draft decree is intended to leverage the digital identity concept which the country has been implementing since 2013.