“This is unquestionability the Holy Grail,” said the NSW digital minister Victor Dominello.
New South Wales (NSW) Australia is set to rollout their new digital identity that would completely replace basically all physical licenses and documents, and instead keep them all stored in a secure government app on citizen’s smartphones.
Outgoing NSW digital minister Victor Dominello debuted the final product and its many benefits last week at a press conference, calling the province’s forthcoming decentralized digital identity system as a lever for “huge micro-economic reform.”
Reported by InnovationAus.com, Dominello says that Australia must grow a “digital spine” after utilizing drivers licenses, medical insurance cards and birth certificates as “de facto” IDs, adding that tangible and paper documentation are no longer “fit for purpose in the data age.”
What Australia needs is basically to grow a backbone – and that’s a digital spine, and that digital spine isn’t a typical… spine. It looks more like a double helix because Australia’s a federationDominello said, who also explained that these new secure IDs were needed after large data breaches last year was the signal for change, he expressed
This metaphorical double helix he speaks of consists of “two siderails”: ‘the federal government’s myGov and a separate platform operated by each state and territory – in the case of New South Wales, the NSW Digital ID,’ the outlet explained. The “rungs” between the siderails would be things like driver’s licenses, passports, veteran’s cards, etc., explaining the impact of affinity between digital ministers last week to widen the national identity system to include credentials.
That rung is dovetailed into the siderail. Its all-in-one app. You don’t have to muck around going from one app to another and navigating.
I downloaded the My Health Record [app]. Great app, very silky smooth… but to get there you had to change windows and muck around with passwords. So it’s just not a great setup experience,He added, praising the speed and seamlessness of this digital ID versus other digital passports in Australia
Dominello also said that this app is “world leading” and is ahead of what many other nations are working to achieve.
This is not 10 years away, this is here. We’ve got 100 people on [one] pilot. We have built trust architecture, privacy, security, ethics, transparency… and we’ll continue to build that out. This has to be trusted.
By this time next year, we will start seeing a whole lot of this start radiating out… into industry. This is unquestionability the Holy Grail. This will take the hard edge off cyber… It also makes sure that when it comes to service delivery that the customer is truly in control.He said
Furthermore, He also stated that ‘while digital identity is initially a G2C [government to consumer] play, it is “huge micro-economic reform” that will quickly become a “G2B [government to business] play, a B2B [business to business] play, a B2C [business to consumer] play.”‘
The official NSW website adds:
You will no longer have the inconvenience of sharing scans and copies of your physical documents and cards when proving your identity. While NSW Digital ID won’t replace the paper versions of your credentials, it will give you an option to digitally share confirmation of who you are.
NSW Digital ID will be simple enough for anyone to use. It will provide greater accessibility, particularly for customers with disability, those that are time poor, or live in rural or regional areas. This will put all our customers in control of their digital identity and credentials.
