featured interview

Last December ICF Executive Director Drummond Reed spent a day in Victoria, B.C. with the identity management team in the Office of the CIO for the Province of British Columbia, including Ian Bailey, the Executive Director of Architecture and Standards, Charmaine Lowe, Director of Information Standards, and Patricia Wiebe, Senior Identity Architect. The following interview is based on many of the topics they discussed.

Q: Let’s start with the big picture: when did your office first begin to focus on identity management?

A: Back in 1996 we determined that identity management was going to be key to developing a shared services approach for the delivery of IM/IT services for government and started a program to develop a corporate identity management Technology was a real barrier for us at that point, but with the release of Windows Active Directory in 2000 we were able to consolidate most of our directories into a single centralized domain for government workers.  Also at that time we were building our first version of an authentication service to support government’s interactions with businesses and citizens, and in 2002 we started our BCeID identity provider service.  We learned a lot from those first efforts, particularly that directory centric solutions were not going to work in the long term.

Q: So you’ve been at this a long time. Overall, what are the goals of your IdM program, i.e., what’s your vision for what IdM can do for the BC government and the people of the province?