Australia’s new digital identity system could be great, but implementation is key, says a new policy brief from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The report, Australia’s new digital ID system: Finding the right path to implementation, written by ASPI’s Dr Rajiv Shah, argues that “a digital ID system can only be successful if it is implemented across the board.”

“Customers need to know that their data will be kept confidential and secure and that there are no attempts to monetize identity data,” Shah writes. “Companies need the trust and market incentives to invest in providing digital ID services.”

“After many attempts, the Australian Parliament has finally passed the Digital ID Bill. The proposed digital ID system is ambitious, but as the Australian Government moves from primary legislation to implementation, it must now overcome some formidable technical and administrative challenges to ensure the system can succeed.”

The author’s proposed solutions include “a fundamental re-orientation of the government’s communications strategy – engaging the public to better explain the proposals, and more stakeholder engagement to capture all viewpoints and find the right answers to complex questions, such as the right balance between security, privacy and usability.” This is a recurring theme in Australia’s development of a national digital ID as the government rolls out a technology it does not yet clearly describe.

The lack of a clear business case also worries Shah. He says: “A core requirement of management is a clear and credibly calculated business case that provides objective confirmation of the cost-benefit ratio.” This is lacking, he says – as is a clearer demarcation of regulatory responsibility between states, territories and the private sector.

In addition, the technical requirements are incomplete and overly complex. There is no system-wide approach to cybersecurity. There are not enough restrictions on how relying parties can collect and use personal data. “The new digital ID system appears to be designed to allow users to set up multiple digital IDs,” enabling identity theft. The privacy and security trade-offs may not be worth it.

“The governance and technical requirements are well-intentioned, but incomplete, too complex and difficult to understand,” says Shah, who is clearly not impressed with the progress of the first phase of the gradual introduction of digital IDs.

Nevertheless, there is hope for Australia’s digital ID.

The report concludes with ten policy recommendations for the decentralised, optional identity system. Number one is the bottom line: “Provide a realistic cost-benefit analysis with a credible baseline and reasonable assumptions.” Number two is the communication line: “The Department should launch a public engagement and education campaign to improve Australians’ understanding of the system in 2024-25.”

Another important recommendation is the establishment of a task force that also includes private sector companies. “It should find out how the integration and interoperability of public and private digital ID systems can be accelerated in order to avoid fragmentation of the market.”

Victoria’s machinations could bring down the entire digital ID ecosystem

An equally dismissive article in The Mandarin argues that the digital ID system may be doomed due to some foolishness by Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan. The article suspects “a secret plan by the Victorian Government to potentially hand over the day-to-day running of its Births, Deaths and Marriages (BDM) Registry Offices to private commercial operators.”

By reaching out to the investment community to ask them to “take a closer look and get a bid to run the public register of hatches, matches and consignments”, the Labour leader has created chaos that “threatens to destroy a nascent, nationally interoperable digital identity ecosystem across multiple branches of government and their agencies”.

A pilot project for Australian digital birth certificates is currently being carried out in New South Wales. Global consulting firm Thoughtworks is supporting the development and deployment of the architecture required to provide the digital certificates.

The rapid trend towards digitalisation of public services in Australia, which includes the recently announced Trust Exchange (TEx), has led some observers to compare Australians to “guinea pigs in an untested digital experiment”.

Article topics

Australia | birth registration | civil registration | cybersecurity | data protection | digital government | digital ID | digital identity | government services