In January of 2021, Executive Order 13985 titled Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government was released. Today’s discussion shows how agencies are responding to that mandate around identity management.

It would seem there should not be a problem. The goal here is to make sure everyone has access to benefits, loans, and even FEMA support. In an ideal world, a citizen accesses a federal website, gets identified, and continues through the process. However, we have people get frustrated with the digital process of identification to the point where they abandon their requests.

Today’s discussion looks at the NIST's special Publication 800-63 and its fourth draft revision, which mentions advancing the equity of identity management.

David Temoshok is one of the experts at NIST who drafted the document. He explains some of his thoughts about how to manage large numbers of people trying to get identified. He explains some of the challenges in digital credentials and some advances made, referencing login.gov. From a broader perspective, he thinks that a federated approach to identity management may be the solution.

The 2017 NIST 800-63 included multi-factor identification, the current draft tries to take this concept to the next level. It suggests ways to make MFA phishing resistant. One of the weaknesses of making identification “frictionless” is the risk of overprovisioning.

Bryan Rosensteel from Ping brings a good perspective to the challenges of digital identification, he thinks that it is an exciting time to be involved in the world of identification, especially in one new aspect like automation and identity lifecycle management. He mentions topics like military systems that are disconnected, yet still must maintain credentials.

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