Businesscase first – is there an existing solution – decide solution. That is the driving force for the way we work at WAYF (Where Are You From). This approach has been the key factor for the architecture we have today, and it is great to see that we have been able to piggybag on others development instead of reinventing the wheel.

• We needed from day 1 – that the institutions in WAYF could reuse their existing SingleSignOn infrastructure. So we created support for that.
• At some point we created a businesscase that clearly showed – the need and benefit for aligning WAYF to the national eID solution – so we aligned.
• Some very large cloud vendors doesn’t understand the concept of IdP’proxies – so we adapted our infrastructure in order facilitate access and to give benefit to the institutions in WAYF.
• We started out doing work only for universities. Having the infrastructure in place there was a fantastic businesscase in letting other institutions use the infrastructure – more value for Taxpayers money. So we opened up.
• We put all out solutions out as open- source in the hope that others can benefit from the work done and paid for once. We see that others are using what we have done.
• We do technical connections to vendors when asked by institutions – it has not yet failed that the benefit was in place almost immediately for more than one institution.

Having done quite a few projects – we see – that the ones we really benefit from is the ones where we either align to the surrounding world or where there is a potential for reuse. The strategic choice of complementing other initiatives instead of competing with them has proven to be a huge valueadd for all.
This listing of actions and culture all ends with a deeply felt wish that stakeholders, vendors and others grasps the huge potential there is in reuse and sharing.
My belief is that this will be true both across sectors in the public administration and in the field of privat-public engagements.