DHS seeks single sign-on solution

More than a year after Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff declared improved information sharing as one of his six priorities for overhauling DHS, the agency has issued a request for information for industry solutions that can provide single sign-on access to its online services.

Responses must be filed by Aug. 15.

The statement of work accompanying the RFI states that DHS’ intention is to build an enterprisewide single sign-on service for its employees, contractors and partners.

“Providing as much direct, self-service access as possible to sensitive information maintained by DHS and our mission partners is essential to improving our strategic information-sharing capability,” the statement reads.

A critical part of the project is to define the types of information the single sign-on service needs to make decisions about who would be given access to what information and when.

The goal is to define a core set of user attributes for the single sign-on service that will improve information sharing and security, according to the statement.

DHS hopes to complete this analysis by the end of September.