Justice Department Pursues Flexible Identity Management
The Justice Department is running a pilot program of the Law Enforcement Information Sharing Program, which is designed to allow federal agency employees, as well as state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies, access to multiple applications being run across various federal agencies.
Many of the programs require multiple forms of user identification, so credentialing each employee for every application is not a practical approach. Instead, a central repository for identification will be established.
When a user requests access to an application outside of their primary agency, the application will access the repository to verify credentials. Credentialing is a multi-step process that involves positive identification of the individual, a list of the systems that person is allowed access to, and the distribution of passwords, smart cards, or other identification keys.
Boris Shur, the Justice Department’s manager for the pilot program, said the DOJ is working with the FBI on new systems that could potentially be used by hundreds of thousands of state law enforcement workers, and federal identity management seems like the only solution.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center (NLECTC) from the Government Computer News (03/19/07); Vol. 26, No. 6; Jackson, Joab.