I only spotted this a day or so ago – and was rather amazed.
National digital identity framework prototype only weeks away
09.08.2016
A new federated national digital identity framework is coming in 2017. It will accommodate smaller agencies and won’t be dominated by the big federal players, says the project’s leader.
The Digital Transformation Office will release details of how it plans to build a national proof-of-identity system that doesn’t require an exchange of much personal information at the end of this month.
The DTO’s digital identity team, led by Rachel Dixon, will publish details of its alpha prototype on August 29, and take it on the road to explain the plan for a “double-blind” system to communities around Australia. The roadshow program will no doubt involve explaining over and over that this is not another example of the government collecting, linking up and storing information on its citizens.
As part of the August 29 alpha launch, the DTO will publish draft open standards to replace the existing national identity proofing guidelines. The beta version, which the public will be able to use, is expected to emerge about halfway through 2017, Dixon told the Technology in Government conference last week.
[Update, August 26: the alpha release will not happen on August 29.]
Fun for the whole federation
She said the aim was to create a “genuinely whole-of-government” digital identity solution that could link together with existing identity credentials from business and agencies of federal or state governments.
“It means a platform that all the governments can use,” said Dixon, “and that means the approach we take to building the thing also needs to be slightly different, because the cost of on-boarding becomes a really big thing for small agencies.”
“Quite often, government initiatives are built by large agencies and the smaller agencies are not really part of the design process, so we’re trying to be as consultative as we possibly can.”
Dixon’s team is “very keen” to make it as easy as possible for smaller agencies in all tiers of government to get on board with the new federated national platform, which responds to a recommendation from the Murray inquiry into financial systems.
However, the DTO team “really struggled to find a situation in which local government absolutely has to know who you are,” she added later.
“By and large, you pay your rates and local government is happy to get your money,” Dixon said. “There’s not many other pieces where they absolutely have to know who you are — childcare might be one, so we’re investigating that. But at state level there’s certainly quite a few.”
There will only be one Commonwealth identity provider, which is “the most contentious decision” the team has made so far, according to Dixon. “It’s certainly got a lot of agencies very agitated,” she said.
“So it won’t be the [Australian Taxation Office] being an identity provider and the Department of Human Services being an identity provider and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade being an identity provider — a lot of those agencies have credentials that we will be working with, but they themselves will not be identity providers.”
She said the new “series of products and a framework” will be designed for two realities of the federation: that “the states either have or are mostly building their own identity platforms” already and most citizens aren’t entirely sure or don’t really care which tiers of government do what.
“The point of the DTO is supposed to be about making things easier for people,” said Dixon.
“If you’ve already got your identity proved to the New South Wales government to a certain level of assurance, then is it really fair to ask you to go through the process all over again for a federal government credential?
“Isn’t there a way we can take the couple of hundred thousand people that have got one of those things and make some federal services available to them? Likewise, if you’ve got a Commonwealth credential, should you be able to use that? If you move from state to state, should you be able to use your old credential to work in your new state? Why not?”
Lots more here:
As I read this basically we are seeing a new identifier that is going to be allocated to each citizen that they can use to interact with most arms of Government and which will replace a range of other credentials – as well as replacing portals like myGov etc.
This ID seems to look to add to the other 3 I already have, just from the health sector:
1. An IHI
2. A NSCC AUID
3. A RNSH Medical Record Number.
Forget all the others from Banks etc.
One gets the sense we are being numbered to death!
I wonder where the Privacy Impact Statement that covers this is carefully secreted!
David.
No comments:
Post a Comment