Meet Bill Kannberg, CTO of Hills-borough County, FL, technology guru to 5,000 users, and leader to a dedicated networking staff of 85. Kannberg is the new face of digital identity technology. Just over four years ago, he and a team of part-time networkers created an online portal using Novell's eDirectory, and its access management product, iChain. The portal saved county employees from having to log into some 20 different applications and databases. This saved more than just time. "We didn't have to add anyone for after-hour support," he says. "And that saved us about $500,000 a year." Digital identity technology was largely designed, marketed, and aimed at consumers. After all, it's the consumers who would be visiting Web sites supporting the Liberty Alliance's (www.projectliberty. com) specification or Microsoft's Passport (www.passport.com), the two leading digital identity initiatives out there today; consumers who, once they've signed onto those sites, would be free to browse the Internet securely without having to re-log in at each site; and, yes, consumers, whose purchasing and surfing habits would be acquired and sold among Microsoft, AOL, and e-commerce sites across the Internet.
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