University of Illinois System

SailPoint Implementation Project: Modernizing the Enterprise Identity Governance Administration (IGA) Environment

Project Summary and Goals

Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) is a key component of Identity & Access Management (IAM) that focuses on managing and governing user identities, access permissions, and compliance requirements. While IAM ensures that the right people have access to the right resources, IGA provides visibility, control, and auditing to ensure that access is granted appropriately and in accordance with policies and regulations. To ensure alignment and consistency, as well as building a unified approach across the System and all Universities, the goal is to transform our current, sometimes conflicting, IAM solutions. This project will implement the IGA Tool, SailPoint, a SaaS-based Identity Security solution. The key benefits will be modernized security, workloads, and workflows, enhanced security and compliance, reduced security risks and compliance violations, as well as establishing critical IAM Governance.  

Pre- Implementation Work Overview   

Implementation Partner Search

The Implementation Partner Search began in January 2025, with the IAM Steering Committee documenting crucial conditions, parameters, and needs to create the criteria for an official Request for Information (RFI) from potential partners. From there the following has been accomplished:

  • 14 SailPoint Admiral Partners were contacted
  • 11 RFIs were returned
  • IAM Steering offered follow-up meetings with potential vendors who received the highest marks on our Scoring Matrix that focused on:
    • Institutional and Contractual Requirements
    • Organizational Capabilities and Personnel Requirements
    • Technical and Implementation Expertise
    • Implementation Approach and Support
    • Additional Logistical Considerations
  • From there, meetings were scheduled with those potential vendors, and two vendors were chosen to move forward with a Statement of Work for what the Steering Committee considered or Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
  • The specifics for the MVP are being worked out with IAM experts and Identity professionals (HR and Registrars offices) across each Institution (UIUC, UIC, UIS, UIH) and the System Office.
    • UIH has been working on a separate SailPoint implementation, which will be analyzed at a future date for integration with the Enterprise/Campus SailPoint implementation.
  • A final partner choice will be made in June 2025

Stakeholder Identification and Establishing Governance

Stakeholder Identification and Governance activities have begun with IAM Steering and Identity professionals across the institutions. Looking to not only socialize and build awareness around the efforts of the SailPoint Implementation/IGA Modernization, but to also fully understand how Employee and Student Identities can be streamlined to create a consistent identity and authentication system enterprise wide, as well as the experiences that can be created for employees and staff supporting this experience.

  • Student Identities are being discussed with Registrars and Admissions personnel to identify pain points within student experiences throughout their time with a University, the Universities, and the University System – considering all aspects of the experience, applying-admission-acceptance/enrollment/deferment-course/degree interactions-graduating/separating from university-becoming alumni/former student-returning as student/employee/other.  
  • Employee Identities are being discussed with HR to identify pain points within employee experiences throughout their time with a University, the Universities, and the University System – considering all aspects of the experience, applying-acceptance-onboarding-moving within departments/units-separation/retirement-returning employment/other.  

IAM Steering Committee

The University of Illinois IAM Steering Committee has been made authoritative for all IAM programmatic decision-making to ensure consistency, efficiency, and alignment with institutional and system-wide goals. It is represented by the following individuals:

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – Technology Services

  • Kim Milford, Deputy CIO and Chief Privacy and Security Officer
  • Jeff Domeyer, Assistant Director, Identity and Access Management

University of Illinois Chicago – Technology Solutions

  • Shefali Mookencherry, Chief Information Security Officer, Chief Privacy Officer
  • Scott Lagger, Associate Director, Identity and Access Management

University of Illinois Springfield – Information Technology Services

  • Kara McElwrath, Director of Technology Operations

University of Illinois Health – Information Services

  • Murad Dikeidek, Head of Cybersecurity, Information Security Office

University of Illinois System/Office of the Executive Vice President and Vice President for Academic Affairs

  • Joe Barnes, Chief Digital Risk Officer, Digital Risk Office

University of Illinois System/Administrative Information Technology Services

  • Rod Schaefer, Assistant Vice President, Application Development and Support 
  • Chris Barton, Senior Director, Infrastructure, Cloud Architecture, and Assurance  
  • Cythia Cobb, Senior Director, CIO Operations and Organizational Strategy
  • Jody Groff, Project Coordinator, Project Management Office

This Committee has been made authoritative and responsible for:

  • Decision Making on IAM policies, initiatives, and investments. Decisions will be made by consensus, and when that is unreachable an escalation process to UI IT LT will be used as necessary. (we can create a visual for this as we elaborate on the info below, if desired)
    • Identity and Access experts will comprise to-be-determined sub-committees tasked with identifying requests for enhancements to security, workloads, and workflows
    • IAM Steering Committee will review requests with sub committees and approve or reject requests
    • UI IT LT will weigh in on any request that needs to be escalated
  • Strategic Oversight to guide and oversee IAM-related projects to ensure alignment with institutional priorities, and system-wide objectives.
  • Fostering communication and collaboration across the universities and system offices to address IAM challenges and opportunities.

SailPoint Education and Connectivity Practice

SailPoint Education and Connectivity activities are in progress to prepare the project team to work within this new IGA product.

  • SailPoint Identity University learning is underway with Critical IAM experts from each institution were identified to take part in to better understand this SaaS IGA product and its components
  • Tenant Connectivity and Source of Record Integration Practice  
    • Configured and deployed a Hyper-V VA image in data center to understand the work that will be required when we configure/deploy the additional Vas needed
    • Began SailPoint Source of Record Integration practice to better understand needs under SailPoint and has considered the following:
      • Instance Naming
      • Scheduled Aggregations
      • MFA Token Compatibility
      • Entra Integration
      • SailPoint Identity Profiles