Welcome to the E-Authentication site

Originally launched in 2002 as the E-Authentication Initiative and as part of the President's Management Agenda, the E-Authentication Solution assists Federal agencies in meeting two primary goals:

1. Mitigate the security and privacy risks associated with electronic government by allowing government agencies to develop trust relationships with their respective user communities through the use of electronic identity credentials (e.g., PKI certificates; user IDs/passwords) issued by other agencies and commercial organizations.

2. Control costs associated with authenticating the identity of a large number of end users by eliminating the need for each agency to create and maintain a separate credentialing system for each of their online applications.

To achieve these two primary goals, the E-Authentication Solution created the US E-Authentication Identity Federation which allows Federation members to recognize and trust log-in IDs that are issued by other trusted Federation members. The trusted members that issue these log-in IDs may be other government agencies, academic institutions, or commercial entities, such as banks or other financial services institutions.

The policy issued by OMB in Memorandum M-04-04 and by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Special Publication 800-63 (NIST SP 800-63), and industry standards such as the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), form the foundation of the Federation. Together these foundational pieces provide agencies a policy-compliant and standards-based framework for authentication and identity services that enable the reuse of identity credentials across government applications. The E-Authentication Solution Program Management Office (PMO) provides agencies with the technical assistance and operational support needed to function successfully within the Federation.

Through the US E-Authentication Identity Federation an American citizen will be able to access government services online using a log-in ID they already have from a website they trust, rather than having to create another user ID and password.