Public-sector agencies are under increasing pressure to modernize their digital services, yet they face longstanding structural and technological hurdles. New digital services must integrate with a patchwork of legacy applications, mainframes, and hybrid systems. This fragmentation also forces users to understand government organizational structure just to complete simple tasks — whether reporting a pothole, paying a utility bill, or accessing benefits.
The path forward begins with treating identity as the connective tissue of digital government. Instead of each agency maintaining its own entry point, a unified identity layer gives residents a single, secure way to access all the services they need — regardless of which department runs them. This “no wrong door” approach simplifies digital interactions, reduces user frustration, and strengthens trust in public systems.
“Having a single way to identify your users and centralizing the way that people get into the applications adds the security to applications that need it,” said Joël Franušić, Solutions Engineer with Auth0 and Okta. “Once you have that baseline, you can take advantage of modern technology to secure not only the modern tools, but also all the legacy systems that are there as well.”
In this video interview, Franušić explains why identity management is the core of modernization, and how the right platform can simplify the task of centralization. Topics include:
- Why modernizing legacy systems starts with identity, not a full rebuild.
- Why AI means agencies can no longer put off the identity work they already knew they needed to do.
- How putting identity at the core lets agencies strengthen security and simplify access at the same time.