• Home
• GOVERNMENT CXO
• E-GOVERNMENT
• CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
• TAX AND REVENUE MANAGEMENT
• GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT
• GREEN GOVERNMENT
• GOVERNMENT DATA MANAGEMENT
• GOVERNMENT SECURITY
• GOVERNMENT CLOUD
• GOVERNMENT ANALYTICS
• GOVERNMENT GIS
• CONNECTED GOVERNMENT
• DIGITAL INCLUSION
• EDUCATION IT
• HEALTHCARE IT

Education IT, Government Cloud

Singapore: tertiary institute takes on single sign-on platform

By Xinghui Guo | 6 July 2011

The Singapore Institute of Technical Education (ITE), with 25 000 full-time students and 2400 faculty staff, has upgraded its portal’s systems with a single sign-on platform for authentication so that data are secure and the portal easy to access.

Tan Kay Chuan, Divisional Director, Information Technology at ITE, explains, “For most of our staff and students, the first thing they do each day is log onto the institute’s portal. With our online portal at the heart of our learning activities and internal communication, we must ensure it is safe from misuse or malicious attack.”

Hence, the existing online portal was overhauled in a 15 month period to have single sign-on access for more than 10 different key application within the ITE portal, including iStudent (student administration), eTutor (e-Learning), Lotus Notes applications (workflow), CRM (industry-based training), plus knowledge management, business intelligence, employee self-service and other systems.

Tan explained that having a single sign-on made log-in for users simpler and faster. The system also had perks from the administrative angle.

“Adding and voiding accounts for new and leaving students each year has become a simpler process,” Tan said.

ITE’s portal is divided into three categories with various applications and functionality accessible via each area:

Live: provides self-service access to enrolment records and human resource systems so students can update personal details and staff can request holiday or view employment benefits.

Learn/Study: forms the foundation of ITE’s e-learning system, including knowledge-based applications and e-tutoring for students.

Play: a collaborative community space that features blogs, videos and other entertainment for students and staff.

ITE is now tracking the portal’s use through web analytics, user feedback from annual survey, and application stability through maintenance log. While the portal is now hosted on 11 application, web, content management and search servers, Tan said that ITE might consider moving these services to the cloud depending on the maturity of cloud infrastructure related to “confidentiality, bandwidth and total cost of operation”.

Tweet

---