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Over the years, we have helped our customers with:

Customer Experience Improvement

Secure e-Business Solutions

Seamless inter-organization e-Business Applications

Intranet Portals

Electronic Workflow Applications

Executive Replacement

e_Business Breakthrough

Involvement

For the Government of Ontario, I provided the business systems expertise to pioneer secure personalized access to vendor sites with automated login from the Corporate Intranet Portal, based on the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) login authentication and the the Portal Customer Profile. I documented the process in a comprehensive document titled Rules of Engagement which has greatly reduced the time required to set up new e-Business relationships.

Components

Figure 1 shows a simplified illustration of the various components of the Portal and B2G / B2B e-Business solution.

The customer first authenticates into the Portal using the Government's public key infrastructure (PKI) using a secure digital identity and a complex password. Once authenticated, a main page, personalized and customized for the customer, is displayed. From this page, the customer can access the products and services they need in the con text of their work. Login to secure sites is handled by the Portal and requires no manual intervention from the customer.

To access a secured service, the customer simply clicks on the icons corresponding to the desired service. The Portal automatically performs the secure login into the customer's own account into the system requested. The system accessed uses the normal security model during login and to grant all access rights and privileges to the customer. There is added security by the fact that the user ids and passwords are secured within the Portal and never shown. The customers do not need to remember a multitude of user ids and passwords, and access to the secured systems is available exclusively through a connection to the Portal. From the Government standpoint, security is enhanced security by the use of long strings of random characters for user ids and passwords for all systems accessed through the Portal and by preventing access to Government data from public computers.

Requirements

This process requires interoperability between the Government Portal and the suppliers' site. The first implementations required a fair amount of analysis to develop the best overall method of interaction between the systems. There are many requirements including:

• Modification of the supplier site

• Creation of a portlet

• Development and publication of policies, procedures, information, FAQs, etc.

• Implementation of the required customer support

Deliverable

Based on the experience of the early installations, I developed comprehensive documentation including the Rules of Engagement document that details the generic requirements and processes for these integration projects, as well as a set of generic project implementation templates. The Rules of Engagement includes alternative methods that can be used to create interoperability with the vendor's system and to automate the Government side of customer account creation and maintenance for the vendor’s system. The methods documented provide enough flexibility to handle most vendor technology environments. Care had to be given to ensure that supplier's were not unfairly advantaged or disadvantaged due to their technology platforms and would not have to make significant investments to handle the Government's business.

Results

The Rules of Engagement document is now used by the Government purchasing specialists in preparing new RFPs to guide the proponents in their responses. New Corporate Portal e-Business implementations are easier and quicker, as demonstrated by the four day office supplies implementation outlined elsewhere on this site.

© copyright 1995 - 2004 - Louis-Charles Lavallée Lavallée – Last update November 1, 2004

Trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners

e-Business Portal Application Breakthrough: customers enjoy secure personalized access to outside services, just one click away!

Louis-Charles Lavallée writes the book on secure seamless integration of vendor sites for a large government corporate intranet portal – Read more about the Rules of Engagement.

e-Delivery All the Way! Customers find that electronic service delivery eliminates delays!

We designed an authenticated workflow system to convert a paper based system to a fully electronic system for a large government purchasing cards application – Read more about Pcard Online...

Live in four days: Customer service redefined!

When a new supplier won the tender for the office supplies contract, there were four days left on the old contract. We provided the leadership that made the new supplier site live through single signon from the Corporate Intranet Portal in four days. – Read more about the office supplies transition...

End to end electronic workflow makes customers' lives easier!

We designed the electronic workflow system that spans the Government of Ontario staff and suppliers to provide an integrated solution for the administration of translation jobs. – Read more about the Translation Tracking System... (Coming Soon}