The U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of the Chief Information Officer and its Canadian counterpart have initiated a joint pilot program that achieved a federated identity, credential and access management, or ICAM, connection between their armed forces.
Leslie Beavers, acting CIO at DOD, told DefenseScoop that the program will build momentum from the initial U.S.-Canadian ICAM connection established among 35 participants in the joint pilot’s recent first run, which she described as “a big step.”
“That means that the U.S. identity provider computer trusted the Canadian certificates coming through, and vice versa,” said Beavers, a 2024 Wash100 awardee.
ICAM Policy Considerations
The official said the program’s next steps will focus on needed policy and engineering changes to expand the ICAM to U.S. partners in the Five Eyes alliance and every NATO member.
Beavers did not identify the ICAM solutions involved in the pilot but shared that the exercise revolved around a U.S.-Canada IT system that the countries built together and have been using for years, with the identification solely managed from the U.S. connection.
She said the pilot’s federated ICAM enabled log-ins from the Canadian end using its identity provider to access the combined systems.