Identity and Access Management

The federal government has a unique role to play in creating a national strategy for identity management to facilitate commerce, enhance mobility and travel security, and to promote privacy and accuracy in information security. Potential benefits include reduced loss from identity theft and fraud, greater ability to share information securely across organizational boundaries and the enhancement of on-line commerce.

In order to succeed, there must be collaboration across the government, between governments, and between the government and the private sector. This will involve extending efforts already underway to improve government identity and access management programs, and to resolve a number of underlying policy questions.

This white paper will focus on three related topics: identifying and understanding the challenges facing the United States in identity management; examining how best to complete the implementation of interoperable identity management for government employees and contractors; and looking at the key issues, challenges, and potential benefits related to identity management for first responders, international travel security, immigration, and employment verification.

This paper was prepared as part of the ACT-IAC 2008 Presidential Transition Project