The Common Ground movement of the Dutch municipalities is developing innovative solutions for greater interoperability. An important part of this is the data landscape, where functionality is accessed through microservice API’s. In the analysis of this architecture, one aspect is barely touched upon: The Access Control aspect in API’s is not appropriately co-developed.
The Municipality of The Hague has performed a Proof Of Architecture (the POA) to demonstrate that it is possible to unlock an existing API in which access is not explicitly modeled, or that still uses traditional Role Based Access Control methods internally, restricting interoperability across contexts.
The POA is done in an effective and efficient way through innovative 'zero trust architecture' concepts, such as Policy Based Access Control. Security and privacy are thus demonstrably realized in accordance with legal requirements. The POA proves that it is technically feasible to add input-filtering of access requests to ignore the restricting RBAC method and thereby open doors for municipalities for interoperability in an autonomous and secure way.
During the presentation the working principles of API access from a perspective of Identity & Access Management are explained, but also how these principles can be applied in practice in an existing application landscape.
The presentation will be a joint presentation between the lead architect of the City of The Hague, Jan Verbeek, and access strategist André Koot.
