NCID Citizen Identity Project

The N.C. Department of Information Technology is updating the N.C. Identity Management (NCID) service through the Citizen Identity Project. This involves enhancing security, improving self-service and moving external user identities from the department’s on-prem infrastructure to a modern cloud-based service. 

The information below provides project status information to state and local government agency employees who have public-facing applications that use NCID and that will be affected by this project.

Tab/Accordion Item

Project Goals

  • Adopt security best practices by separating external users (citizen and business accounts) from internal work force users (state and local government employee accounts). Currently, all types of user identities are stored together in one repository. 
  • Improve self-service options whereby citizen and business users can unlock accounts themselves and resolve and reset forgotten passwords without having to contact the NCDIT Service Desk.
  • Allow and enable NCID logins using personal social credentials. For example, individuals could use their Gmail account credentials to register with NCID. Since people use their social logins more frequently, they tend to remember these credentials. As a result, people can minimize forgetting and resetting their passwords, and they can unlock their own accounts.
  • Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for both external and internal work force users. Currently, only internal work force individuals use MFA. MFA provides an additional layer of security by requiring users to authenticate with their user ID and password combination as well as an additional code that is sent to their validated email address or phone number. 
  • Support user identity proofing confirmation. This is required by some applications that allow external user identities. Identity proofing is a security approach to confirm that a person logging in is who they say they are. User identity can be verified by a) physical identification documents, such as a driver’s license, b) knowledge-based security questions, such as asking the user to pick their past address from a list of addresses, c) biometrics. 
  • Implement high-availability functionality. This provides system redundancy that enables agency applications to failover with negligible downtime in the event of system interruption.

Project Status

Date Activity
March 5, 2023 Implemented Pre-Prod Cutover
Feb. 15, 2023 Town hall session for NCDIT Service Desk
Jan. 13, 2023 Town hall session for SAML integration
Jan. 12, 2023 Town hall session for shared LDAP integration
Jan. 10, 2023 Town hall session for HTTP proxy integration
Dec. 14, 2022 Town hall session for directory sync integration
Dec. 13, 2022 Town hall session for web service integration
December 2022 HTTP proxy integration testing in development by agency applications
December 2022 Web service integration testing in development by agency applications
April to June 2022 Reached out to agencies to confirm application owners
March 2022 Business requirements document, design discussions, establish connectivity for development environments
January to February 2022 Requirements-gathering workshops
December 2021 Project kick-off meeting
October 2021 Contract awarded to Simeio Solutions LLC

Upcoming Activities*

*Dates are projections and may change.

Registration, Self-Service, Helpdesk Function, Role Management Functions

What

Who

When

Why

User acceptance testing:

  • New user registration
  • Self-service: Forgot Username, Forgot Password, Unlock Account
  • Helpdesk function of Unlock Account
  • Role assignment to a user, role removal for a user

Agency application owners, Helpdesk staff

March 5 to March 24

This will help validate user interface screens.

Go live - External Identities in Simeio-Ping directory in Production

Agency application owners

 May 21 External Identities would be migrated from NCID to Simeio-Ping directory.

 

Directory Sync Applications

What

Who

When

Why
  • Establish connectivity between Agency Directory & Simeio-Ping Directory in Dev
  • Test applications in Dev env

Agency application owners & Simeio

Nov. 1 to March 17, 2023

To resolve any issues before we launch in Pre-Production.
  • Establish connectivity between Agency Directory & Simeio-Ping Directory in Pre-Prod
  • Test applications in Pre-Prod env

Agency application owners & Simeio

March 10 to March 31

To resolve any issues before we launch in Production.

Establish connectivity between Agency Directory & Simeio-Ping Directory in Prod

Agency application owners & Simeio

March 20 to March 31

Prep for Production.

Validate applications in Prod env

Agency application owners

May 21

Go live

 

Web-Service Applications

What

Who

When

Why

Test applications in Pre-Prod env

Agency application owners

March 5 to March 24

To resolve any issues before we launch in Production.

Validate applications in Prod

Agency application owners

May 21

Go live

 

SAML Applications

What

Who

When

Why
Test applications in Pre-Prod Agency app owners March 6 to March 24 Test SAML apps in Pre-Prod
Validate applications in Prod Agency app owners May 21 Go live

Simeio provide metadata for Dev, Pre-Prod and Prod

Simeio

May 29

To onboard SAML applications to Simeio Access Manager.

Provide application metadata for Dev, Pre-Prod and Prod

Agency app owners

May 30 to June 9

To onboard SAML applications to Simeio Access Manager.

Configure application in Dev

Simeio/Agency app owners

June 12 to June 30

To adopt the new AM solution.

Test application in Dev

Agency app owners

July 3 to July 14

To adopt the new AM solution.

Configure application in Pre-Prod

Simeio/Agency app owners

July 17 to Aug. 4

To adopt the new AM solution.

Test application in Pre-Prod

Agency app owners

Aug. 7 to Aug. 18

To adopt the new AM solution.

Configure application in Prod

Simeio/Agency app owners

Aug. 21 to Sep. 8

Go live – as soon as the application is configured, it will be live.

 

Shared LDAP Applications

What

Who

When

Why
Test applications in Pre-Prod Agency app owner March 27 to April 7 To enable agencies to test their applications in Pre-Prod and resolve any issues before we launch in Prod.
Validate applications in Prod Agency app owner May 21 Go live

 

HTTP Proxy Applications

What

Who

When

Why

Test application in Pre-Prod for existing HTTP Proxy

Agency app owner

March 6 to March 24

To validate application function using the existing HTTP Proxy solution.

Deploy authentication plug-in for Prod

NCID team

May 21

To allow authentication of external users against Simeio Directory and internal users against NetIQ eDirectory.

Validate application in Prod for existing HTTP Proxy

Agency app owner

May 21

To validate application function using the existing HTTP Proxy solution.

DNS cutover of the application URL in Dev & Pre-Prod

NCID/NCDIT network

May 30 to June 16

To validate the new HTTP Proxy solution.

Test application in Dev and Pre prod with the new HTTP Proxy

Agency app owner

June 19 to July 14

To validate application function using the new HTTP Proxy solution.

DNS cutover of the application URL in Prod

NCID/NCDIT network

Aug. 7 to Aug. 18

Go live with the new HTTP Proxy.

Notes

  • Initial implementation is focused on migrating existing external identities to Simeio followed by migrating applications using external identities to Simeio while keeping application impact to a minimum.
  • Implementation for social logins, multi-factor authentications, identity proofing will occur in a later phase.

Contact

For questions about this project, please contact Jim Shafer, Identity Management operations manager.