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Security of information, and compliance with New Zealand’s Privacy Act, is vital for any government agency. The associated challenges are significant for the Ministry of Education with a very wide range of users across the education sector, including employees, partners and students with a wide range of access requirements.
The Ministry and education sector agencies, such as the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA), provide a range digital services to teachers, school administrators and education professionals throughout New Zealand.
With a desire to work together to provide a simple and easy to use experience for their user community, the sector agencies have taken an integrated approach to the delivery of services.
A critical factor for an optimal user experience is a single username and password to enable users to access sector applications, and efficient provisioning and support of these credentials.
The existing education sector identity verification and access management systems were reaching end-of-life, and the ageing technology on which they were built was increasingly challenging to support. In addition, there is a requirement for a modern platform to enable the sector to meet an increasing demand for digital access to services.
Did you know? The Ministry of Education (Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga) won the Public Sector Project of the Year prize for the Education Sector Logon Upgrade Project.
The Education Sector Logon (ESL) was upgraded to provide an identity and access management system to meet current and future requirements across the education sector. It supports around 100,000 teachers, school administrators and other workforce users across over 22 critical education sector operational applications from the Ministry, NZQA, TEC and the Education Council.
Stuart Wakefield, chief information officer, Ministry of Education
Having previously worked with other government agencies on large scale identity projects, Datacom understood the complexity of the education sector’s requirements and the high security and privacy threshold that must be met.
Given the scale and diversity of the education sector, and the inherent complexity of identity and access management, adopting a traditional ‘waterfall’ approach was considered unsuitable because the timeframe was critical and new technology provided options to improve the user experience. Datacom used an Agile methodology, moving into a Ministry location to immediately start working with Ministry staff on developing a platform. We adopted an iterative approach which enabled us to build and refine the solution as the complexity was understood, and an optimal solution evolved. This approach enabled continuous consultation and rapid prototyping. Sector stakeholders had visibility throughout the process, which lead to user acceptance and expected outcomes.
Stuart Wakefield, chief information officer, Ministry of Education
Having previously worked with other government agencies on large scale identity projects, Datacom understood the complexity of the education sector’s requirements and the high security and privacy threshold that must be met.
Given the scale and diversity of the education sector, and the inherent complexity of identity and access management, adopting a traditional ‘waterfall’ approach was considered unsuitable because the timeframe was critical and new technology provided options to improve the user experience. Datacom used an Agile methodology, moving into a Ministry location to immediately start working with Ministry staff on developing a platform. We adopted an iterative approach which enabled us to build and refine the solution as the complexity was understood, and an optimal solution evolved. This approach enabled continuous consultation and rapid prototyping. Sector stakeholders had visibility throughout the process, which lead to user acceptance and expected outcomes.
The solution went live in April 2018, after the successful migration of 22 applications using SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) 2.0, 70 machine-to-machine accounts using OAuth 2.0, and the transition of more than 70,000 users and their attributes from legacy systems.
Datacom’s experience in digital identity projects informed the optimal way to design, build and test the core software component of the solution. The adoption of automation facilitated rapid testing of software iterations, and the creation of new environments. New features could be quickly and confidently deployed as required.
Ministry staff were introduced to the Agile methodology, and trained and coached by a qualified Agile coach to ensure they understood and were integral with the process.
The high quality of engagement, collaboration and close communications across business and technical levels was endorsed and validated both by education sector stakeholders and in an external quality assurance review conducted by PwC.
