Position statement - Interoperable identity services

In relation to identity services (aka claims services) government is wearing (at least) two hats. First, Government must act as the policy setting body regulating usage of identity services in general for society. From a policy perspective it is important for government to enable privacy and security for the individual citizen and evolution of an enabling IT-infrastructure that also support competition, innovation and openness. Besides setting policy government is also a deployer of identity services. These services are required in many citizen-to-government and business-to-government solutions as well as for government-togovernment solutions. As a deployer of identity services government can be quite a big customer. In the Danish case the public sector covers a third of the labor market. Thus the government sector is a large customer in the market. In the Danish public sector federation we have chosen to use the OASIS SAML 2.0 standard for all members in the federation to accelerate uptake and to keep integration costs down. The federation standard was chosen by weighing a number of criteria. Details are briefly discussed.