Simplifying online identities at U-M

Imagine a researcher at the U-M Medical School who needs three different logins to do her daily work; or a clinician who has to toggle back and forth between his umich.edu and his med.umich.edu accounts to access the resources needed; or an admin in the engineering lab who has to grant account access to several new hires with different responsibilities.

To make it easier for the U-M community to get the right access to the right IT systems and services at the right time, all four U-M campuses — Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Flint, and Michigan Medicine — have joined forces to coordinate identity and access management processes through the Enterprise Identity and Access Management (EIAM) Program.

Launched in January 2017, EIAM stands out as a major cross-campus collaboration initiative because the program includes participation across all campuses and has been jointly funded by the Office of the Provost and Michigan Medicine through the end of June 2018.

A growing employee, student and alumni population means more individuals need U-M accounts. At the same time, it is essential to protect the information belonging to individuals and the university. EIAM is identifying “pain points” and the challenges of access management, with a goal to simplify the procedures while making them more secure.  

“To best support the collaborative work of our faculty, staff and students, we must make their identity, roles and access seamless as they move within multiple areas of U-M. Our current methods rely on dozens of poorly connected IT systems. Centralizing these activities in terms of policy, priority and tools ensures consistency and reduces confusion,” said Andrew Rosenberg, M.D., interim chief information officer for Michigan Medicine. “Through collaboration and integration, we are laying the foundation for long-term improvements while fixing some immediate pain points using modern IT systems for identity management.”

Seven individual sub-projects have been identified, including Account Lifecycle Optimization (ALO) which already completed its first wave of improvements:

• Updated and centralized onboarding and offboarding process flows

• Simplified automated email messages to new hires and students

• Launched new process for access liaisons to authorize accounts  

The email revisions are already prompting praise from the U-M community.

“I love the new email to students! It is very clear and explains everything very well,” said Mary Anne Brancheau, educational nurse coordinator with Michigan Medicine Professional Development and Education. “I also love the link to the Help Me Now locations. The subject line in the email (will) grab their attention.”

Enhancing account tools and making password setup easier for new hires are the next tasks planned for ALO.

Stay informed of all program updates on the EIAM Program News & Updates page.

If you are interested in learning more or participating in any of the projects, please reach out to the EIAM Project Team.