Local Governments Adopting Smarter Identity Management
With movement between capital cities and regional areas more than double the pre-pandemic levels, IT departments at local councils are stretched and are considering identity management solutions to better service staff and residents.
"Okta’s approach – to leverage what we had in place and simply streamline the interface – has saved the Council hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of effort."
James Hickmott,
Senior IT Coordinator, City of Greater Dandenong
Remote working sparked wide-scale digital identity transformation
Council staff working remotely during the pandemic has been the catalyst for business transformation for many local governments. With the shift to cloud services that enable home working, legacy digital identity management based on active directory authentication are no longer fit for purpose.
Single source of truth
Having a single source of truth for identity management allows councils to leverage and link cloud platform services together, meaning better management of user profiles, increased security and compliance.
Frictionless and secure experiences
Local councils are looking to replicate this frictionless and secure experience in the access to citizen services.
Digital transformation to enable remote working
What started as digital transformation to enable remote working, needs to move to service council residents. A streamlined identity profile across services, such as roads, rates and rubbish collection, means a more user friendly and secure experience.
Security plus a frictionless customer journey
A consistent citizen identity is the foundation of a seamless customer journey, security is a non-negotiable that goes alongside such an identity.
Resource constrained councils can find it hard to build authentication across the growing number of different applications. This poses potential security risks within app vulnerabilities and custom code.
Digital identity management tools can reduce security issues and link together these applications. Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) means one login can provide access to multiple applications securely, while leveraging a platform that has high resilience and availability.
IDaaS means councils doesn’t need to hold authentication data of citizens, the burden can be managed by providers.
Working smarter with identity management
Rural local councils with increasing workloads and time constrained IT teams are looking to simplify work.
Current identity management practices can mean staff are performing repetitive, repeatable tasks which can mean there is a risk of error and also creates a capacity issue. Standardised identity management allows IT teams to refocus on high value work and let machinery run the standardised processes.
It also means a shift in skill sets. With the burden of security and availability outsourced, focusing on the user profile rules and providing appropriate governance around them makes work easier. For example a business analyst can define the governance structure and a security audit can be done afterwards to ensure compliance.
Remote working sparked wide-scale digital identity transformation
Council staff working remotely during the pandemic has been the catalyst for business transformation for many local governments. With the shift to cloud services that enable home working, legacy digital identity management based on active directory authentication are no longer fit for purpose.
Reducing the burden for IT
IDaaS can be easier to use, reducing the burden on highly skilled IT workers and managers as work can be distributed more widely across the team.
Avoidance of security issues
While it can be hard to quantify the cost savings up front of switching to an external identity provider, the avoidance of even one security issue can make the investment worth it.
Reduced lag time
Reduced lag time for introducing new services, potentially reducing implementation timeframes from 6 months to a few days. Getting the job done quickly with the resources available is important.
Automate Onboarding & Offboarding
Organisations spend an inordinate amount of time onboarding and offboarding employees, contractors and partners. Teams struggle with manual provisioning and a lack of clearly defined business processes which can lead to incorrect access for users and a decline in productivity for IT teams. Triggering changes from HR or IT systems, better yet, connecting the two to synchronise data between HR and IT, can significantly ease the burden on both teams.
On-demand Webinar
Digital Transformation Through the Lens of Identity Management
Watch this on-demand webinar as we discussed:
- Overcoming business challenges to provide local government employees with access to information without sacrificing UX to deliver superior citizen service
- Delivering engaging user experiences without sacrificing security through IAM
- Assessing the tools and capabilities available to support council IAM programs including meeting requirements for the use and management of sensitive information
- Reviewing challenges and opportunities in managing a large volume of complex accounts across multiple SAAS applications, platforms and networks
- Discussing real world insights into transformation surrounding both enhanced security and usability for employees and customers across council services