Federated Authority Management

A federation is comprised of any number of affiliated and/or independent organizations. StarGarden’s Federated Single Sign-on (SGFS) organizes and manages any number of federations. Federations are completely independent of each other; basically separate worlds but within a federation, member organizations can operate privately or they can 'publish' all or part of their structure to the federation. For example, a company might wish to 'publish' a purchasing position or role to some defined part of the federation.

INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURES

These structures within the federation are effectively independent communities that are defined and managed independently by the communities themselves. These communities (e.g. divisions, departments) have positions and roles which can be in unlimited numbers within a single organization or across a federation of organizations. (e.g. The federated authorities are then applied to the hierarchy structures which constitute your organizational delegation of authority policy and these authorities are in turn inherited by incumbent users.) See Federated Identity Management & Provisioning.

  • Authorities control a wide range of user privileges including workflow routings, approval rights, access to information and services, and domain/network access.
  • Through powerful inheritance architecture, federated hierarchies automatically inherit delegated authorities based on applied upward, downward or lateral inheritance.

BENEFITS

For example, you may want to:

  • Maintain company-wide information at the top of the hierarchy and apply downward inheritance so that all communities below inherit the information.
  • Publish content via our portal and make this available to users in a specific federation role and so apply lateral inheritance.

In complex organizations, this makes StarGarden a vital tool even for simple services such as contact directories and FTE/headcounts, etc.

What is a Federation?

  • a federation is a collection of communities and users.  
  • a community is a structured (or unstructured) collection of positions and roles such as an organization, a city, a company, a board, etc.
  • a user is an identity
  • authority for decisions are delegated throughout the community structure


  • positions inherit, or are assigned, formal authorities which are automatically inherited by incumbents
  • authorities can be delegated from the position to other positions.
  • inherited authorities can be delegable or not
  • if a position delegates any authorities, the delegating position remains accountable and can follow any actions incurred
  •  a workflow "event" is initiated with a "request" from a user (or an automation) 
  • A user (or automation) can initiate an event "on behalf" of another user
  • an event arrives at the next step and is visible on the dashboard as a "task" 
  • tasks can have escalation rules with due dates, minimum or maximum

Every decision driving your business is made by people. Your people underpin your applications and your interface to stakeholders including as vendors, customers, contractors and applicants..

StarGarden is streamlines your processes, improves efficiency, and enhances productivity. With a wide range of features and functionalities, our solution is tailored to meet the unique needs of your organization.

Our organization-based workflow solution ensures that workflows adapt reliably to the changes that occur in your business and become a maintenance headache with other WF solutions.

Authoritative
decision-making

Identity &
Provisioning

Business Process
Management

Federated - include vendors, customers and stakeholders

Work that crosses organizational lines is work no other system handles.

Cities work with funded agencies. Boards work with departments. Services work with regional partners. Yet almost every system assumes a single organization, so the moment work crosses that boundary, you fall back on email, spreadsheets, and trust that the right person is doing the approving.

StarGarden Federation Server closes that gap. A federation is simply a group of organizations that agree to work together while staying independent. Each one, a department, a board, a city, or an agency, defines and manages itself, stays private by default, and publishes only what it chooses to share. Authority then flows across those lines automatically, so the right person can act no matter which organization they sit in.

People from different organizations collaborating across a shared table

Stay Independent

Each community, a department, board, city, or whole organization, defines and manages itself. Federations are separate worlds; members operate in complete privacy unless they choose otherwise.

Share Only What You Choose

Publish a single position, a role, or a whole service to a defined part of the federation. A city can share a purchasing position with one agency and nothing else.

Authority That Flows

Assign authority to positions and it inherits automatically to whoever holds them, applied upward, downward, or laterally across the hierarchy, with no manual reassignment.

One Authority Model

A single model governs workflow routing, approval rights, access to information and services, and domain and network access, across every organization in the federation.

One View, Every Community

However many communities a person belongs to, they see one consolidated list of their tasks, workflows, and responsibilities, not a separate login for each.

Secure Interagency Work

Lock workflows and decisions down end-to-end between authorized individuals across organizations, with transparent audit trails and clear, lasting accountability.

How a federation works in StarGarden

Each organization stays in control, while authority and work move cleanly across the lines between them.

1

Each organization stays itself

Every community defines its own positions, roles, and structure, and manages them independently. Nothing is shared until that community decides to share it.

2

Authority flows to the right people

Authority attaches to positions and inherits to their holders automatically. It can be delegated from position to position, and the delegating position stays accountable for whatever follows, so the chain is always clear.

3

Organizations cooperate across boundaries

Publish what you choose, route work securely to authorized people in other organizations, and give every user one consolidated view of their responsibilities across the whole federation.

A leader reviewing decision authority across an organization

Most software manages data. StarGarden manages authority.

Authority is the right to act on something at a particular moment, and it is the thing that actually keeps an organization safe, accountable, and moving. StarGarden has tracked authority explicitly since it pioneered the many-to-many people and position model in 1985, in a collaborative development with BC's Ministry of Labour. Even today, few providers offer anything close.

Authority never works alone. StarGarden tracks competency right beside it: the skills, certifications, and resources a person or position brings. So work and decisions route to people who have both the right to act and the ability to deliver, and nothing lands on someone who cannot carry it.

That pairing is what makes cooperation across organizations trustworthy. The system always knows who holds which authority, whether it can be delegated, and for how long, so a manager going on leave can hand theirs to a colleague for the duration. The right tasks follow automatically, while accountability stays exactly where it should.

Built for how the public sector actually works

Government collaborates constantly, and StarGarden's federation model fits that reality. Share workflows across departments and funded agencies, make interagency decisions securely, distribute budgeting and approvals, and share training and resource scheduling across the parties involved.

It extends to resources too. Shared assets like people, vehicles, rooms, and equipment can be allocated by competency and authority, with a transparent audit trail. Agencies can even share a single applicant pool while each one makes its own hiring decisions and carries its own costs. A federation is not only internal either: vendors, contractors, and applicants can take part too, each with exactly the access their role requires. Cooperation where it helps, independence everywhere else.

Public-sector teams from different agencies coordinating shared resources

Federated Authority Management, answered

A group of independent organizations that agree to work together while each stays sovereign. A community is any structured or unstructured set of positions and roles: an organization, city, company, board, or department. Each one runs itself, stays private by default, and shares only what it chooses.

Because email and spreadsheets cannot tell you who actually has the right to act. StarGarden routes every task and decision to the person with the authority and competency to handle it, across organizational lines, with a full audit trail. Collaboration becomes secure and accountable rather than informal and risky.

No. Communities operate in complete privacy by default and publish only the specific positions, roles, or resources they choose, to a defined part of the federation. You decide what to share and with whom.

Authority attaches to positions and inherits automatically to whoever holds them, applied upward, downward, or laterally. It can be delegated from one position to another, and the delegating position stays accountable and can follow any resulting actions. Inherited authorities may be delegable or not, as you set them.

A workflow event starts with a request from a person or an automation, and one user can even initiate an event on behalf of another. The event arrives as a task on the right person's dashboard in their own organization, can carry escalation rules and due dates, and stays locked down end-to-end between authorized individuals.

Any organization that depends on others to get its work done: municipalities and their funded agencies, health boards, education networks, and regional partnerships. If your work regularly crosses an organizational boundary, this is built for you.

Part of the StarGarden Workflow suite

Workflow Overview icon

Workflow Overview

Authority Manager icon

Authority Manager

Identity and Provisioning icon

Identity and Provisioning

Business Process Management icon

Business Process Management

Federated Authority Management icon

Federated Authority Management

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Cooperate freely. Stay in control.

See how federated authority turns cross-agency collaboration into something secure and simple.

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