Government Bits

Tracking how technology is transforming interaction between governments and citizens.

Last week, we sponsored a seminar in Washington, DC presented by Federal Computer Week on the “Intersection of Security and Information Sharing: How to Improve Government Efficiency in a Security-Conscious World”.

The seminar brought together government professionals, senior government officials, technology and security leaders, and industry executives to discuss security and the role of authentication in delivering information assurance and increasing business process efficiency for the federal government.

Aaron Lippold, senior technical advisor and computer scientist with DISA, spoke on “Forge.mil – Information Sharing and Secure Collaboration”. Our own John Landwehr, senior director of Enterprise Security Solutions, discussed “The Role of Forms Process Security in Ensuring Secure Information Flow”. And Steve LeSueur, contributing editor with 1105 Government Information Group, moderated a panel with Aaron and John on “How to Improve Government Efficiency in a Security-Conscious World”.

We caught up with John at the seminar and encourage you to check out this video for his thoughts on the event and what he and others discussed.

As always, we’re interested in your thoughts, so please share in comments, on Twitter @AdobeGov or on our Facebook page.

Are solving the issues of effective identity and authentication pre-requisites to delivering channel shift to low cost online public services?

The future of public services is most definitely digital: confirmed last month in the Government’s new ICT strategy. Indeed, in the Age of Austerity the potential for reducing the costs of service delivery by a switch to digital is too great to miss – but unless we can securely deliver the right service to the right people we risk even greater waste through fraud and further contact.

The London Borough of Brent has been trialling a new concept – the Mydex citizen data store – along with exploring use of the Government Gateway; Enfield, meanwhile, has implemented a new corporate authentication service with help from Serco and GB Group. The panel explored the benefits and pitfalls of getting ID and authentication right.

On the panel:

• Dane Wright, IT Strategy Manager at the London Borough of Brent
• Lee Grafton, Serco and Enfield’s GB Group identity solution
• Gilles Polin, Adobe’s European Head of Government Solutions
• Helen Olsen, Managing Editor, UKauthorITy and ITU magazine

An on demand version of the Webcast is available from this link.