Provision of an Identity Governance Tool including implementation and Support Services.

Description

The primary goal is to implement a modern Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution aligned with a robust Identity Governance structure to provide a platform that underpins the University’s Digital Strategy aims for Organisational Excellence. This will align the identity system with the University's strategic growth plan, especially supporting the international growth agenda and desire to provide a more personalised digital experience for staff and students. We will prepare the identity governance tool for increased complexity and expansion opportunities, whilst also improving the security of our systems and data.  <br /><br />The University operates a highly complex digital environment, with a wide range of identity types requiring access to high value digital services. Many of these will have role-based access requirements, providing the right access within these system at the right time. Digital identities, for both staff and student will have to accommodate multiple personas and will need to be both diverse and flexible. An example might be a student who then becomes a researcher or contributor who then moves on to become an employee. How that identity is managed throughout its lifecycle within our organisation has many challenges, and this project presents an aspirational opportunity to move to a single Identity for joiners, movers, leavers, and returners. <br /><br />The university is highly collaborative in its core teaching, research, and enterprise objectives. We need to facilitate efficient and secure access to services for trusted partners and visitors, some of these use cases are complex and highly sensitive. We wish to leverage emerging technologies to provide trusted access with other Institutions and assurance platforms. Elevated access and non-person system identities also need to be created, requested and released with appropriate tracking and management. <br /><br />An appropriate granularity of access control is required to track and optimise our licence provisioning and associated costs for software ranging from large enterprise, high performance research computing through to niche desktop software installations. Increasingly our service provision is distributed across cloud hosted SAAS providers with the associated integration challenges for complex Identity data.<br /><br />Governance needs to be improved to verify that the high level of access provisioning is accurate and appropriate. This needs to be risk driven, actively recognising and escalating high risk Identities or usage. <br /><br />Objectives, deliverables, and targeted outcomes <br /><br />The overarching outcomes to be realised by the Identity and Access Management project are: <br />• Futureproofing of the University’s identity platform - By replacing the existing IDM platform with a sustainable solution that is supportable long-term by staff and technical teams, the University will benefit both financially and operationally, by removing “key-person dependency” and optimising staff time through upskilling and redeployment. <br />• Investing in an identity platform that supports the University Digital Strategy - This project will not only improve the identity and the access lifecycle, but it will also ease the deployment of modern identity capabilities to support the end-to-end student and staff experience at the University. This will utilise a single identity from initial engagement before an individual joins the University, throughout their journey, and after they leave. <br />• Protection of digital assets and services at the University - By implementing role-based access and setting the appropriate permissions and models at the right time, the University will enhance their security capabilities, providing consistent and seamless provisioning of services and reducing the risk of unauthorised access and security breaches.<br />