Tax seeks new single sign-on solution

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is seeking a single access management solution to manage how staff and external clients sign into its business systems and online services.

Official letterheads.

The ATO currently uses a commercial product and a separate, bespoke access manager to control how in-house and external users log into its systems.

In a request for information issued last week, the agency sought a single, off-the-shelf solution for both types of users.

Tender documents indicated that the solution would integrate with its SAP HR platform and token-based authentication for staff and whole-of-government digital authenticator AUSkey for external users.

The ATO is one of the largest Australian Government IT shops, with some 22,000 staff accessing its local and wide area networks at 64 sites across the country.

It uses a combination of mainframe and Windows-based midrange platforms and software including an IBM DB2 mainframe database, SQL Server midrange databases, SAP ERP 6 and Siebel CRM.

The agency sought a product that required minimum customisation, noting that the Australian Government Information Management Office had recommended the use of commercial- or government-off-the-shelf products.

Specific requirements of the new solution included:

• Single Sign On (SSO) functionality for both internal and external users;
• Internal authorisation based on an individual's position, roles and skills;
• External authorisation based on individual's responsibility within the company;
• The ability to define users' "need to know" and "separation of duties", with controls to limit and report on high-risk access combinations;
• Business reporting and audit logging functionalities, and the ability to track a user's access in a single system view;
• The ability to update authorisations in bulk and as single entries;
• Mainframe access control functionality;
• A common user interface;
• Configurability, extensibility and
• ‘help’ functionality.

The Tax Office called for expressions of interest from suppliers of high-end enterprise access management solutions until 2 February.