And speaking of identity...
Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 08:57AM I needed to print out my last 2 pay stubs this morning from payroll provider's self-service portal, which consisted of the following steps:
[1] Dig back through my emails to find the right URL from the last time I had to do this 6 months ago.
[2] Stare at the login screen for a few minutes and try some likely looking logins/passwords.
[3] Determine that I need to avail myself of the "Forgot your User ID?" button.
[4] Find out that the userID is close to, but not quite the same as, my login for any similar %company% portal.
[5] Reset my password once I obtain the user ID, since I can't remember that either.
[6] Finally log onto the portal to get the stuff that I need.
...and all I could think of the whole time was Stuart, Gil, and the rest, and say (with apologies to the Coen brothers): "Oh, federated identity, where art thou?"
Reader Comments (3)
I talk a little bit about this in an old post - http://www.identitychaos.com/2007/12/adfs-vs-cardspace-to-entitle-or-not-to.html
I see two paths here:
1) the benefits provider chooses to federate with each of companies it provides services for, or
2) the benefits provider federates services through a central managed infocard provider (CardSpace)
Both solutions will work and provide you the experience you desire, but from the service provider point of view, which is more likely to be adopted? I think at least perceptually, the second option (add one federation trust vs many) becomes more palatable especially when your company can issue managed infocards directly via AD. Which version will become more popular remains to be seen but flexibility here is the key!