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.
Local councils can’t provide the kind of IT salaries that industry or banks can pay. Meaning IT teams are constrained in terms of resources and time, making it preferential to avoid high complexity processes and automate repeatable, time consuming tasks.
Les Pall
Technical Platforms Manager, City of Parramatta
As public entities we hold important data, such as property deed information. Therefore security is of utmost importance, if our systems are compromised we are compromised.
Lalitha Koya
Head of IT, Moorabool Shire Council
Okta's solution for Local Governments
Okta can help councils are integrating digital identity management into their strategic roadmaps. It is likely there will be an increase in identity management services across government, potentially with even some integration at local, state and national levels in the longer term. Having a trusted, external identity provider is allowing rural and regional local councils to alleviate the burden on constrained IT departments, while providing secure services for citizens.
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.
