Eight things businesses and customers need to know about digital ID in Australia

This week has seen a resurgence in discussions around the roll out of a national digital ID in Australia, after Finance Minister Katy Gallagher spoke on the subject at the Australian Financial Review Government Services Summit. This has sparked a fresh round of questions and concerns around digital IDs, including how they would work and if they would be secure.

It’s a big subject that has been kicking around for around a decade. And it’s an important one because a digital ID proposes a great deal of benefits when it comes to convenience and privacy. But with that comes valid concerns around how it would work, availability for people who aren’t digital natives, and security, considering the Australian government’s track record with digital ‘solutions’ such as My Health Record and Robodebt.

With that in mind, we have pulled together answers for some of the most common and pressing questions around an Australian national digital iID.

What is an Australian national ID?

The national digital identity scheme will allow Australians to condense all of their official licenses and forms of identification on a single platform that is regulated by the government.

From there, government departments and third-party organisations — such as a bank, insurance company or even a retailer — could access it to verify your identity

An ideal version of this platform would allow this verification without the need for the third-party to capture personal information, such as your birthdate, address or signature.

Doesn’t the MyGov app already do this?

The MyGov app does already let you store digital versions of Medicare, Centrelink concession and health care cards and your international COVID-19 vaccination certificate in its ‘wallet’.

It also allows you to link up a number of government-related services.

However, not all cards and ID are captured by this service (for example, a digital passport). The government itself says on the MyGov website that there is still a way to go.

“It may take some time before all providers are ready to accept digital cards from the myGov app. It’s a good idea to carry your physical cards with you.”

There’s also the issue of being able to use these digital cards widely and consistently with services outside of the government ecosystem.

“From the everyday person’s point of view, we’ve got the system; it’s just not regulated and not in a shape I think that will allow us to drive it forward and give the interoperability and the economy-wide benefits that come from having a national system, but we’re very committed to it,” Gallagher said this week.

“We want to see an economy-wide system, and in a sense we’ve got that operating now, without regulation. We’ve got some private digital ID providers and then you’ve got myGov.”

Could a national digital ID mean sharing less personal information with businesses?

That’s a strong potential possibility, and one that is being advocated for by the former NSW minister for customer service and digital government, Victor Dominello.

For years he has been pushing for a form of digital identification that doesn’t force Australians to hand over personal information, like birth dates.

Let’s say you are signing for a package, the idea is that you could show your digital ID (which has been verified by the government) to a delivery driver and have it verified without the need for your signature. Or perhaps you want to prove you’re over 18 at a pub. In this case, a national digital ID would prove you are the age you say you are, without revealing your actual birth date.

What possibilities would a national digital ID have for businesses?

There are plenty of ways in which a digital identity could affect businesses.

For example, it could be an alternative to the controversial proposals to roll out facial recognition in pubs and clubs to identify people who have been banned.

There are also arguments for it improving user experience for customers when logins are simpler and removing time-consuming manual labour.

And as there is a push for stricter privacy laws around how long businesses hold onto customer records, a digital identity could mitigate this issue. Businesses won’t need to spend the time or storage on holding onto records that they don’t need.

Deloitte also states that it could mean increased customers and revenue for businesses, especially those that adopt early, due to the ease of use, efficiency, and how it will position a brand as one that values the privacy of its customers.

Would I have more control over my digital ID than the government?

That’s certainly the theory, and one that has been pushed for by Dominello.

“You hold the golden keys,” he said at a Tech Council of Australia event in March.

“So the customer genuinely – not just in language – informs the centre of [this] rather than rather than governments and banks.”

While we don’t yet know exactly how a nationwide digital identity would play out in practice, Katy Gallagher did reflect a similar perspective when questioned about it this week.

“It’s really about you having control as citizens; control of their information that allows them to access government systems in a very easy, secure, voluntary and efficient way. But you know, I’m going in with my eyes open that there’s a fair bit of work to do on this, and hopefully bipartisan support.”

Are digital driver’s licenses the same thing as a national digital ID?

While some states in Australia already offer digital driver’s licenses (as well as trials around digital work credentials), they’re more of a stepping stone towards an eventual national digital ID.

Some scenarios still don’t allow for digital drivers licenses to be used as ID, and at the present time they’re all state-based. The digital ID of the future would be nation-wide, meaning it would work and be accepted across all of Australia — and hopefully overseas as well.

As an example, on a recent trip to the US, a colleague found that bars would not accept a New South Wales digital license as a form of ID but would accept a physical one.

From Dominello’s perspective, digital drivers licenses are a “crude defacto” and reveal too much information.

“Fit for purpose digital ID would give more control to the individual on what information they share and for how long,” Dominello said on LinkedIn.

Are there privacy and security concerns around a national digital ID?

Absolutely.

The ethos behind digital IDs is improved privacy and security for individuals through minimising how many companies and institutions have access to their information.

This has become of particular concern over the last 12 months in the wake of major breaches from Optus, Medibank and Latitude, especially because Australia lacks specific data privacy laws.

These are all great arguments for a national digital ID.

However, the federal government has an extremely poor record when it comes to implementing digital systems. The two biggest in recent years have been the catastrophic results of Robodebt, as well as the rushed rollout of My Health Record despite glaring privacy concerns. This included the inability of many Australians to opt out after discovering records had already been automatically made for them.

Australians can’t be blamed for being wary of government infrastructure being relied upon for something as important as a central point of digital identification.

Just this week it was revealed that scammers have gotten away with over $500 million in an ATO fraud due to a flaw in the MyGov system.

So the fact that Gallagher has pencilled in mid-2024 as a possibility for roll out is understandably concerning for some.

When will national digital ID launch in Australia?

There is no firm timeline right now, but at the AFR‘s summit this week, finance minister Katy Gallagher said the government has cabinet approval to release an exposure draft “hopefully by September”, which she hopes to then get into Parliament by the end of the year.

“I think, we’re going to attack it in, we’re going to implement it in phases. And I think our first, once we’ve got it up and running, the next stage is to really make sure that the state and territory digital ID systems are interoperable, and then move to the private sector. There’s still some detail which I think will come out during the consultation. So, on the exposure draft, I’m really keen on getting that out as soon as possible so we can get all of the feedback to shape what the actual legislation looks like when it goes into the Parliament.”

Gallagher said that once the legislation is in place, the national digital ID system could be ready to be rolled out by mid-2024. Of course, this doesn’t mean it will actually happen by then.