News
Press Releases: E-Authentication
September 7, 2004
GSA’s E-Authentication Initiative Stays On Track, Report Says
Washington, D.C. - The U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) E-Authentication Initiative scored high grades in an analysis by Burton Group, a Midvale, UT information technology research company, GSA announced today.
”What this report says is that our initiative has taken the right approach to building a government-wide identity verification system,” said Steve Timchak, GSA’s E-Authentication Program Executive. “It accurately reflects the work we’ve done and outlines concrete steps to ensure our continued success.”
Like the other 24 E-Gov Initiatives on the President's Management Agenda, E-Authentication aims to make the federal government more citizen-centric, encourage partnerships between government and the private sector and save taxpayer dollars.
“The E-Authentication Initiative’s goals are achievable,” according to the report by Burton Group. “The anticipated benefits are real and far-reaching, and extend to end-users, governmental organizations, and commercial businesses alike. The E-Authentication Initiative is well-defined, flexible, technically sound, and employs industry best practices.”
The report also recommends that GSA focus on agency adoption, engage commercial credential service providers, maintain a proactive position on privacy issues and continue to adopt state-of-the-art E-Authentication technology.
GSA awarded Burton Group a competitive contract to produce an independent report, as required by Office of Management and Budget’s Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART). Burton studied the E-Authentication Initiative’s technical architecture, its emphasis on interoperability and its reliance on a federated identity management approach.
The full Burton Group report may be viewed at the E-Authentication Initiative’s Web site (www.cio.gov/eauthentication.) For information on each of the President's E-Gov initiatives, please visit www.egov.gov.
GSA is a centralized federal procurement, property management and policy agency created by Congress to improve government efficiency and help federal agencies better serve the public. It acquires, on behalf of federal agencies, office space, equipment, telecommunications, information technology, supplies and services. It also plays a key role in developing and implementing government wide policies. GSA, comprised of 13,000 associates, provides services and solutions for the office operations of over one million federal workers located in more than 8,000 government-owned and leased buildings in 2,000 U.S. communities.
