This appeared a few days ago.
Tony Abbott promotes Malcolm Turnbull to take charge of e-government
Date January 23, 2015 - 3:29PM
James Massola
Political correspondent
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has bolstered Malcolm Turnbull's ministerial duties, handing him greater responsibility for e-government in a push to expand the use of a single digital identity for Australians.
Mr Turnbull and Mr Abbott on Friday announced the creation of a new Digital Transformation Office, made up of developers, designers, researchers and content makers. It will work like a start-up and look to expand the use of the MyGov site across federal, state and local governments and potentially deliver big savings for the budget bottom line.
The establishment of the new digital office is designed to resolve the messy division of responsibilities between several departments, including Finance and Mr Turnbull's Communications Department, for e-government services.
In an interview with Fairfax Media, Mr Turnbull said he was keen to establish a digital mailbox or platform that could be used by people to interact with every level of government.
Lots more here:
Clearly what is being talked about here is an identifier of some sort which can be used to ‘join up’ services from a range of layers of Government.
Does this remind anyone of the Australia Card, the Human Services Card and the Individual Health Identifier Service?
Clearly there is a long way to go but it will be interesting to see how the single digital identity will be constructed to be useful and widely used while addressing the various privacy concerns which will inevitably arise.
I will be watching closely to see what comes next!
David.
Turnbull's article on the DTO in The Australian today does not mention 'digital identity'. But, over at the UK's GDS (cited lovingly by Turnbull) a blog entry enthuses "One of the first items on the DTO’s todo list will be a Verify-style identity service “to ensure people no longer have to complete separate log on processes for each government service.”" Note a response from John Sheridan of AGIMO.
ReplyDeleteHow many national 'identity assurance' functions have been sliced off for private contracts? SchlumbergerSema comes to mind, from the distant past.
Another question comes to mind. WTF is going on?
Adam Henscke in The Age Why a single online ID would be dangerous is good.