State of Nevada Division of Welfare and Supportive Services

Success Story

To simplify user management across disparate systems, the State of Nevada Division of Welfare and Supportive Services moved to a Novell® solution for security and identity. The Division reduced IT administration time by 80 percent and can give both internal and external users secure, single sign-on to applications.

Overview

The mission of the State of Nevada Division of Welfare and Supportive Services is to provide quality, timely and temporary services enabling Nevada families, the disabled and elderly to achieve their highest levels of self-sufficiency. The agency has approximately 1200 employees in 26 locations across the state.

Challenge

The State of Nevada Division of Welfare and Supportive Services recently moved from a large and expensive mainframe environment to a server environment with Web-based applications. However, the Division's 17 unconnected applications each required separate user administration and security models. The IT staff spent much of its manually updating user information across its systems.

Security was also a top concern as the Division handles a tremendous amount of sensitive information related to public assistance and child support. The Division wanted to securely extend access to its applications to hundreds of external users in affiliated organizations, as well as a broader audience of child care providers. The Division needed an automated identity management solution to simplify user access, improve security and greatly reduce IT administration.

Novell Solution

"Identity management is really the cornerstone of everything we do and we needed a solution that would work across multiple platforms. Our Novell solution gives us more value for our money than we found with other options."

Glenn Meyer
Senior IT Manager
Nevada Division of Welfare and Supportive Services

The Division evaluated identity management solutions, including IBM Tivoli*, before selecting a security and identity solution from Novell consisting of Novell Identity Manager, Novell iChain®, Novell SecureLogin and Novell eDirectory™.

"We were moving rapidly into a chaotic and unmanageable situation with so many disparate systems," said Glenn Meyer, Senior IT Manager for the Nevada Division of Welfare and Supportive Services. "Identity management is really the cornerstone of everything we do and we needed a solution that would work across multiple platforms. Our Novell solution gives us more value for our money than we found with other options."

The Division worked with Novell Consulting® and Novacoast, a Novell Platinum partner, to implement its identity management solution.

"We were phenomenally happy with the product knowledge and project management skills of Novell Consulting," said Meyer. "The expertise of the Novell consultants, combined with the talents of the Novacoast team, was key to the success of this project. They took the extra steps to make us successful."

The Division uses Novell eDirectory as its authoritative source of user identity information. Novell Identity Manager synchronizes user identity information across 17 different applications, including HR, financial and social services systems. This automatic synchronization not only eliminates hours of manual updating, but also improves the accuracy of user information.

"Provisioning new users used to be a time-consuming manual process that could take as long as two weeks," said John A. Taft, manager of Information Systems for the Nevada Division of Welfare and Supportive Services. "Now we can automatically provision a new user as soon as their information is entered into our personnel database. We can also immediately revoke user access for terminating employees which eliminates a huge security risk."

Each user now has a single ID and password to access all applications. In the past, most users had to remember at least seven different passwords and often kept them on sticky notes. Novell SecureLogin gives user single sign-on to applications through the Division's portal, as well as secure access to the state payroll application and other systems outside of the Division's administration.

Using a Novell solution, the Division became the first Nevada state agency to provide secure, single sign-on access to its applications using a standard Web browser. Novell iChain provides the authentication for Web-based applications, based on user identity information stored in Novell eDirectory.

"We have received a lot of attention and praise for our Novell solution from other agencies in the state who struggle to manage identities," said Meyer. "Providing secure Internet access has also reduced communications costs for our rural offices that used to have to dial in using expensive private networks."

A consistent identity management solution makes it easy to integrate new applications in days, rather than weeks. The Division is currently integrating a new childcare application and plans to extend secure, online access to every childcare provider throughout the state.

Results

"Provisioning new users used to be a time-consuming manual process that could take as long as two weeks. Now we can automatically provision a new user as soon as their information is entered into our personnel database. We can also immediately revoke user access for terminating employees which eliminates a huge security risk."

John A. Taft
Manager of Information Systems
Nevada Division of Welfare and Supportive Services

Automating identity management has solved the user management issues that plagued Nevada's Division of Welfare and Supportive Services. With a Novell solution for security and identity, the Division can provide secure, single sign-on access for more than 2,000 internal and external users.

The Division has reduced user administration time by 80 percent and reassigned two full-time IT personnel to other projects. The IT team can now provision new users 90 percent faster and can integrate new applications in days, rather than weeks.

"As we move toward a service-oriented architecture, Novell gives us a 'one stop security shop' to easily integrate new applications," said Taft. "We have the right identity management foundation for everything we want to do."