Three Cornwall NHS Trusts have signed a deal, worth in the region of GBP40,000, with Salford Software to provide identity management for 13,000 staff across the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Primary Care Trust and the Cornwall Partnerships Trust - spread over 220 locations in Cornwall and the Scilly Isles.

The three Trusts operate a shared IT department providing access to network resources through a single directory. Once implemented, the identity management system will link to the NHS's Electronic Staff Records (ESR) providing the authoritative staff identity data source for the Trust's HR department.

Integration with the national NHS ESR will ensure that when a 'resource' joins or leaves the Trust, internal systems are triggered to add/change/remove the user within the Trusts internal staff directories.

Linking up with the NHS ESR is a key requirement as well as providing staff with single sign-on and a new smart card system which will allow medical staff and wider Trust employees to access different systems within the three Trusts, based upon their identity and level of access," said Tony Bray, Technical Services Manager, Cornwall IT Services, Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust.

At present, there are around 30 internal systems across the Trusts that may require differing usernames and passwords to be entered in order to gain access - creating an enormous burden on administration and the IT Service desk when resetting forgotten passwords.

The long term aim of the implementation is to remove the need for multiple usernames and passwords and ensure that the user experience is simpler and that staff can use self-service functionality to reset them where necessary, said Tony Bray.

The new system will also take control of the identity of each member of staff, or indeed other authorised users who require access to the systems, and ensure that resources are provisioned based on the identity of that person.

By reducing complexity to the user and generally enhancing the user's experience, the business benefits can be seen through a reduced load on the helpdesk, reduced administration in user management and the quality of data which is held on the Trusts' systems can be significantly improved.

Salford Software has undertaken a complete requirements analysis on behalf of the three Cornwall Trusts and the implementation of the new identity management solution will begin in earnest in the first quarter of 2009. Cornwall has also invested in a twelve month support contract via Salford Software for both Novell and Microsoft support.

This is a key win for Salford Software demonstrating our strength in providing Identity Management solutions for the NHS and other public sector organisations, said James Doggart, Managing Director, Salford Software.

We're delighted to be working with the Cornwall NHS Trusts to provide single sign-on and a link into the NHS ESR. It will make life easier for staff when accessing the many internal systems, will reduce the burden on administration and IT when adding new users and removing ex-employees and keep staff HR records up to date.

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