Norway using Access Manager/Federation Manager for SAML 2.0

It being RSA week, the news comes thick and fast… I’ve just seen the press release announcing that the Government of Norway has deployed a whole slew of Sun hardware and software, including Access Manager and Federation Manager, for its pioneering citizen portal, MinSide (English translation: MyPage). Quoting from the press release:

[…] the MinSide [MyPage] portal will roll-out six initiatives that will enable secure, browser-based access to healthcare, tax, motor vehicle registration, social security, student loans and many other government services.

…and…

As part of the solution, Sun Java(TM) System Access Manager and Sun Java(TM) Federation Manager help the Norwegian government manage secure access to services by offering single sign-on (SSO) as well as enabling federation across trusted networks of government agencies, service providers and customers. It provides open, standards-based authentication and policy-based authorization with a single, unified framework. This improved security framework is based on the Liberty and SAML standards to protect all aspects of the portal.

The Liberty Alliance website has a presentation by Dag Efjestad that gives much more detail. Cool stuff, Norway - douze points!