The IT departments in some key California cities and counties are considering products that would allow residents and employees to use "single sign-on solutions" — the same user name and password for all their local-government dealings — while others are already implementing these solutions.
Sacramento County is considering implementing a single sign-on solution, but hasn’t decided on any products, according to the county's chief information officer, Rami Zakaria.
As the county moves forward, it intends to provide a mechanism for users to store and save their credentials to facilitate a secure connection to all applications.
The city of San Diego prefers to use Active Directory for its integration. However, it has other solutions for when AD can’t be used to integrate. It has completed an initial implementation of a single sign-on solution from Okta and uses Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) for some Web-based applications.
“[Single sign-on solutions are] being used on applications that cross department boundaries, so it is considered an enterprise solution,” San Diego IT department’s manager of governance and strategic planning, George Brister, told Techwire via email.
Los Angeles’ Information Technology Agency is researching solutions for both internal employees and residents of L.A.
It will be using a combination of products for internal and external use, including a hosted cloud solution from Optimal IDM.
Merced County is using Tools4ever's Enterprise Single Sign-On Manager (ESSOM). It is currently implemented in one county department. The county’s IT department has plans to implement the solution throughout the county, but it doesn’t have a time frame yet.
