Issues in managing identification systems

What is credentialling?

Credentialling exploits the potential of smart card technology and enables identity verification to move into the more sophisticated areas beyond basic access control.  Now access to places or the performance of specific operations can be linked to an individual's credentials, be those professional, medical, technical or demographic.  Credentialling, as the name implies, helps to ensure that people performing specialised tasks (e.g. practising medicine, piloting aircraft, railside engineering, etc) have secured the necessary credentials (or pertinent qualifications) to safely execute those tasks.

One example is the National Health Service in England, a business whose annual spend will reach £87.2bn in 2005, has taken full advantage of this step-change.  With 35,000 doctors in training towards their consultants' qualification, in Occupational Health alone, and moving regularly between different trusts and hospitals, there is a real imperative to verify identity and credentials.  Credentials, in this nationwide 'Fitness to Practise' implementation, are the doctors' immunisation and registration records.  These must always be up-to-date in order to minimise the risk of cross-infection both to their patients and themselves.  As a doctor arrives at a new post, his data held on his Smart Card is verified both with a central NHS database and that of the General Medical Council.  Only if the verification is positive and his immunisations are current, is that doctor permitted to go on ward.