NIMC Joins Secure Identity Alliance for Global Digital Services

The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has joined the Secure Identity Alliance (SIA), as an Advisory Observer. The membership agreement was executed in Paris France in April 2019. SIA is the global identity and secure digital services advisory body, which promotes legal, trusted identity for all.

Announcing the development at the 5th ID4Africa opening ceremony in Johannesburg, South Africa recently, the organisation, named the Director General/ CEO of NIMC, Aliyu Aziz as the Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Open Standards Identity API (OSIA) initiative, in his capacity as an advisory observer and the representative of NIMC.

The meeting is SIA’s groundbreaking global programme that set the standards guarding against vendor lock-in for technologies and solutions used by government agencies worldwide in the implementation of their respective identity programmes.

The organisation explained that by allowing governments to exert full control over their national identity programmes, the OSIA initiative provides the standardized data formats and open interfaces that eliminate the interoperability challenges which all too frequently hamper the evolution of national Identity systems.

Supported by the world’s largest identity providers, the Open Standards Identity API (OSIA) would expectedly enable governments and it agencies like the NIMC to eliminate today’s identity silos and extend coverage to provide universal legal identity for all its citizens and residents.

“Injecting new levels of flexibility and openness, the Open Standards Identity API will enable seamless connectivity between all components of the identity management ecosystem – independent of technology, solution architecture or vendor – to assure the seamless interaction of services. With these open standards in place, governments can plan and evolve their systems in complete confidence,” the organisation said in a statement.