The Friends of Penn State digital identity has been designed to enable the development of Web-based applications for University business and service transactions. Those outside of the Penn State community, such as prospective students or recent Penn State graduates, can begin or continue their relationship with Penn State to use such services by applying for or being migrated to a Friends of Penn State digital identity.

The FPS project is a joint effort between several ITS organizations. It began in mid-2002 and it continues to be a major project for Applied Information Technologies in Academic Services and Emerging Technologies, a unit of Information Technology Services.

The initial stage of the project consisted of interviews with key FPS stakeholders and related software developers to develop a set of project goals and requirements. Stakeholders are persons who or groups that have a vested interest in using the FPS infrastructure to provide services and business tractions via Web-based applications. The key stakeholders include:

• The Office of Undergraduate Admissions
• College of Agricultural Sciences
• Alumni Association
• Penn State Great Valley
• University Libraries
• Office of Human Resources (OHR)
• Outreach & Cooperative Extension (O&CE)
• PA State Data Center
• Office of the University Registrar
• Office of Student Aid
• Office of the University Bursar
• Undergraduate Education
• World Campus
• eCommerce

After the interviews were completed, the FPS project team compiled the requirements into a design specification. The design specification is a "living" document that details the FPS requirements, database design, API specifications and a concept of operations. Copies of the specification are available per request by sending e-mail to: fps@psu.edu.

The following list provides a set of goals set forth for the FPS project:

• provide a scalable authentication and authorization system used by Penn State applications for users outside of the Penn State community
• establish a lifetime digital identity for services provided by various units within Penn State
• provide a seamless mechanism for the migration of digital identities between the external and the internal authentication realms and vice versa
• provide a central database of minimal information about the users in the external realm.
• provide a set of APIs to enable applications to leverage the FPS system.
• provide support for the systems noted above

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