Digital Identity

What to Outsource

One of the primary arguments of this book is that identity is a central to the business, and business goals and IT activities can only be aligned through a new approach to managing identity. Otherwise, why would someone go to the effort of creating an IMA?

That being the case, building an in-house competency in identity and the processes for managing an IMA is crucial. Only by direct contact with the processes and systems will your organization know enough about how identity is being used in the business to have it make a strategic difference.

Early in the process, you may need to delegate critical aspects of creating the identity management architecture to outside consultants who can guide the process and have specific skills that in-house personnel do not have. Figure 14-3 illustrates the process of moving from external consultants to internal specialists over time.

Figure 14-3. Moving from external consultants to internal specialists over time

The trick to managing this is that if you turn too much over to external consultants early in the process, you may fail to learn the competencies necessary to bring the process entirely in-house. To alleviate this problem, you should avoid putting external consultants in most of the primary roles in the governance process and use them as advisors only. There may be specific tasks that need to be outsourced, such as conducting ...