The Federal IT Cooperation (FITKO), on behalf of the IT Planning Council, brings together the efforts of the federal government, the federal states, and municipalities to drive forward the digitalization of public administration in Germany. For its collaboration and development platforms, it needed a stable and centrally administrable solution for managing digital identities, user accounts, and access rights. Based on Univention Nubus and with the support of a Univention partner, FITKO has built an open IAM platform and connected various services, such as the collaboration and development platform GitLab, to it in order to provide them securely, transparently, and efficiently to several hundred internal and external users.
User
The Federal IT Cooperation (FITKO) works together with the federal government, the federal states, and municipalities to shape the digitalization of public administration in Germany. As a central coordination and networking body, it provides organizational and strategic support to the IT Planning Council, further develops the federal IT architecture, and manages central digitalization projects. With its platforms, FITKO creates a reliable framework for cooperation in public administration and the shared use of IT solutions.
Requirements
For operating its collaboration and development platforms, FITKO needed a central solution for identity and access management. It was intended to enable both internal employees and external user groups to have regulated access to connected IT applications. The focus was on:
- A central, stable, and easily administrable solution for managing identities, user accounts, and access rights
- The use of a common foundation for cross-application authentication of users and access to the connected IT services
- Reducing administrative effort and improving traceability of permissions and access rights.
Solution
The centerpiece of the new solution is a central Nubus instance on a UCS operating environment for identity and access management.
- Nubus takes over central user and group management and serves as the authoritative directory for the connected services.
- Implementation of Keycloak as the central Identity Provider for user authentication.
- Connection of various external services, such as the collaboration and development platform GitLab.
- Central management of user accounts and access rights for several hundred FITKO users as well as external partner organizations.
Motivation
For operating its collaboration and development platforms, FITKO was looking for a central, stable, and easily administrable solution for managing digital identities, user accounts, and different access rights. It needed to be possible to connect external applications and then use a common foundation for authentication and user management in order to avoid duplicate data maintenance and administrative effort. Transparent processes and reliable operation of the connected IT services for users were also desired.
Project Progress and Benefits
In a multi-stage project, the technical and organizational foundations for central identity management were initially established. Important milestones included:
- Provisioning and commissioning of the Nubus instance based on a UCS operating environment.
- Establishment of central user and group management as a shared directory service for connected services.
- Implementation of Keycloak as the central Identity Provider for user authentication.
- Gradual connection of external services.
- Transition of the solution into regular operation as well as ongoing maintenance and further development.
FITKO now benefits from simplified and transparent user management, standardized access mechanisms, and a stable foundation for further expanding its collaboration and development platforms.
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