Government Computer News
Wherefore art thou?
Program lacks back-end network, authentication architecture
The federal Real ID program to help states develop secure biometric driver’s licenses that also serve as proof of citizenship or legal residence will require major work on back-end systems, and it will require 56 states and territories to agree on a common enterprise identity management architecture that doesn’t yet exist.
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“The concern of the state CIOs is to craft an enterprise solution for identity management,” said Doug Robinson, executive director of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers.
Solving that problem for a program such as Real ID would call for states to agree on a common architecture for identification and authentication, Robinson explained. As part of that process, the state motor vehicle agencies would benefit greatly by agreeing on a common schema, or technical pattern, for the data elements used in driver’s license systems.
Robinson pointed to the Law Enforcement Information Sharing Program, sponsored by the Justice Department, as an example of a structure that has harmonized data definitions and schema that provides a common framework for systems spanning all state and federal police and justice agencies.
The Justice program relies on the department’s Global Justice XML Data Model as its base.
“I don’t think these issues are going to come down to technology,” Robinson said. “It’s all about governance and organizational dynamics and funding.”
Unless states concur on an architecture for the systems to support the Real ID program, “there will be a lot of heavy lifting” via the data exchange engines the motor vehicle departments will use to share driver’s license information, Robinson said.
Four states have taken the lead in wrangling with the Real ID technical issues, Robinson and other sources said.
The California, Iowa, Massachusetts and New York DMVs formed a federation in July 2006 that gave formal shape to an informal Real ID technical working group that had been meeting for several months.
The federation has worked with DHS and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators’ Real ID Steering Committee to set up a Real ID governance structure for all 56 DMVs, according to various sources.
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