Governments today are dealing with challenges that were unthinkable just a few years ago. So knowing exactly who you're dealing with has never been more crucial.

The revelation that two of the September 11 terrorists had been issued visas six months after their deaths refocused efforts within U.S. government agencies to "get it together" with more effective plans and systems for communication and collaboration.

"Getting it together" has been a primary concern for national, state, and local governments ever since. Across the nation, government agencies and the private sector are collaborating and communicating as never before, making preparedness the highest priority. And with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Congress and current administration have begun to address a critical need: the ability to share information with first responders and others who really need it—seamlessly and securely.

Of course, the INS episode is just an extreme example of a problem that plagues business and governments alike: the "silos" of information that proliferate across organizations and that can't be integrated or used in decision making. Standalone applications also hamper governments' ability to share information among communities of users, leading to inefficiency and long response times even for everyday situations such as applying for a fishing license. Getting at the information necessary to deal with a real 9/11-type catastrophe could be far more difficult.

At the same time, governments at all levels are experiencing exponential growth in the volume of data they must process, while the demand for quick answers to complex questions has grown right along with it. To get a handle on this data proliferation and make information more accessible to those who depend on it, governments are turning to portal computing. By putting data, applications, and services on the Web, governments can also reduce costs of operations and enhance revenue collection, market their state or region for business development and tourism, reduce service and IT redundancy, and raise the level of service for all citizens.

Portals are simply Web-based windows onto the applications, information, and services of any organization, including governments. For example, the state of New Jersey has deployed a single portal, on a single platform, that serves all the state's major constituencies—citizens, businesses, other government agencies, and state employees. In the UK, Prime Minister Tony Blair has called for all government services to be available online by 2005, and for all citizens who want Internet access to have it within that same time frame—and the project is ahead of schedule.

In both cases—government agencies needing ways to collaborate and communicate securely and governments wanting to deliver services through portal computing—one piece of foundation technology is absolutely critical: a strong network identity solution.

Network Identity: Are You Really Who You Say You Are?

Controlling access and privileges is probably the key requirement for sharing information, applications, and services online—and that's what network identity solutions are all about. Network identity integrates network security and authentication, user provisioning and customer relationship management, single sign-on, and Web services delivery into a tightly controlled environment, allowing governments to create, manage, and authenticate identities online—and broker services based on them.

Network identity is, for the most part, an extension of traditional directory-based services that enable corporate employees to do many of the day-to-day business tasks we all take for granted—anything from accessing a company's internal phone directory to printing a document. In the broader context of the Internet, network identity solutions enable users to complete online transactions by entering personal information just once and receiving authentication for a whole range of online services.

Some forward-thinking organizations, such as the Liberty Alliance Project, the premier open standards organization for delivering network identity specifications and guidelines, take it a step further, advocating federated network identity—allowing users to link identity information between accounts without centrally storing personal information. In the federated scenario, users have complete control over how their accounts are linked and shared among organizations, service providers, and governments, and users can be authenticated by one organization and access personalized content and services from another, affiliated organization—again, with single-sign-on capabilities.

These types of trust-based relationships have been around in the business community for years—travel alliances and affiliate business partnerships are two good examples—but when you're talking about putting that kind of personal, sensitive information online, it's best to remember one simple axiom: Trust, but verify.

Identifying the Right Network Identity Solution

Since its founding in 2001, the Liberty Alliance Project has grown to include around 160 educational institutions, government agencies, service providers, financial institutions, and technology companies, each contributing its core competencies to helping move the network identity movement forward. Sun was at its vanguard, as a founding force and member of the Alliance's management board, and as a provider of one of the first comprehensive network identity infrastructures—the Sun ONE Platform for Network Identity.

That platform—like any other good network identity solution—delivers a host of capabilities critical to securing and providing network authentication, including:

Identity Management. To keep networks secure, it's imperative to map people to the resources they're entitled to access. Identity management capabilities give governments the flexibility to provide access to services and information, change that access as the situation dictates, and terminate access anytime.

Identity and Resource Provisioning. Automatic provisioning of e-mail accounts, passwords, computer systems, telephone lines, and other resources can help government employees and business partners get up and running without waiting for costly, error-prone manual provisioning—and it can revoke privileges with ease when a user's status changes. Plus, automatic provisioning can reduce administrative costs and security risks.

Application Security. Today's governments need the flexibility to respond quickly to unexpected and very fluid emergency situations by fielding ad hoc teams of employees from many departments, subcontractors, and service providers—and that requires fast, effective identity management to protect valuable information and applications.

But as with any groundbreaking technology, the most critical component of all may be the level of expertise the solution provider brings to the table. After all, today's network identity solution will pave the way for development and support of the next generation of services requiring federated network identity capabilities. So a foundation that brings vision, technologies, services, expertise—and trust—together, right from the start, is essential.