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Council hears briefing on Employee Access rollout, authentication hurdles for jail and courts
Summary
IT staff presented plans to move county employees to Tyler’s Employee Access portal and described authentication options (Tyler identity federation or vendor-provided Okta flow); staff warned turning on Tyler identity for time clocks would require countywide changes and no formal action was taken.
At the April 20 meeting the Okaloosa County Information Technology Council heard a briefing from Mr. Lacey on plans to migrate from Employee Self‑Service to Tyler’s Employee Access portal and the authentication implications for employees who use non‑county domains, such as jail or state (OSEN) accounts.
Lacey said Employee Access is live but the county has not migrated users because of difficulties authenticating non‑Okaloosa accounts. He described two options: create local Okaloosa County accounts for those users or use Tyler identity (TID) to enable single sign‑on and multi‑factor authentication. That approach, he said, would push password and multi‑factor management onto users and reduce the county’s help‑desk burden.
Lacey warned that enabling TID for time‑and‑attendance would be more complicated because Tyler’s time clocks require a county‑wide change: "the decision to turn on Tyler identity for time and attendance would affect everyone at the county at the exact same time," he said, explaining that without TID the county would need to change time‑and‑attendance passwords manually for many employees.
The presentation also covered technical options for federating with external domains (for example, coordinating with the jail’s domain admins or with the state OSEN service) and the vendor‑provided federated login service (referred to in the transcript as "Octa"). Lacey and another IT staffer, Jeff, described the vendor flow as a web‑based login page that can handle account creation and password resets; they recommended the vendor option as the quickest path because Tyler supplies it and the county already pays for the service.
Presenters noted tradeoffs: federating directly with external domains requires more coordination and administrative privileges on those external systems, while the vendor‑provided login simplifies onboarding but requires annual secret rotations and acceptance by partner entities. If external partners do not join the chosen approach, Lacey said the worst‑case outcome would be mailing W‑2s to affected employees.
Council members took no formal action on the item; presenters said they would continue planning and phased rollouts and return with more details if needed.
