Digital Identity
Of all the issues surrounding the creation of a national digital identity system, one of the most critical is where its control should rest.
Some experts see it as a role for government while others would prefer the private sector takes the lead. Pragmatists believe it is likely to be a combination of the two.
During the recent Digital Identity roundtable co-hosted by The Australian Financial Review and Australia Post , participants acknowledged the issue of control was one that had to be resolved at the outset to ensure both the business sector and consumers had faith in the resulting system.
"The problem that government has is, in 1986, we tried an Australia card, in 2006 we tried an access card, and 2016 we tried an online census form," says David Lacey, managing director of identity support service iDcare. "So there is a trust issue there with the community around government on identity that, arguably, … might have pushed things back a few years."
![Head of agency services and RealMe at New Zealand Post, Mandy Smith, says the question is how to come up with the ...](/content/dam/images/g/r/t/n/y/6/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.grtn2k.png/1475637138072.jpg)
Head of agency services and RealMe at Kiwibank, Mandy Smith, acknowledges the issue of government trust needs to be considered, however she points out that they already play a key role when it comes to identities.
"People understand it's the government that holds details for passports and driver's licences," she says. "And, actually, they have a good track record of doing that."
That said, Smith questions whether governments can control an entire digital ID system that works across both public and private sectors. Instead, she suggests that the design should incorporate parties from both sides.
"If you end up designing systems where you've got one identity for government, one identity for banks and another for telcos, it's not really efficient for you as a consumer," she says. "So, (the question is) how do you work as an eco-system to actually come up with the optimal model?"
Boston Consulting Group principal Rebecca Russell says her firm has completed extensive research incorporating interviews with more than 100 consumers to gain a better understanding of the issues around digital identities.
'Prove' themselves
"It took a while for them to talk about identity in terms of the legal sense," she says. "But in doing so they were quick to mention the things that they would want from identity in today's world."
Russell says many reported they have to "prove" themselves every time they have an online interaction with a range of organisations, and this was becoming increasingly frustrating. She says many wanted to be able to "prove themselves once" and then have that ID shared across both private and public sector organisations.
They also expressed frustration at having to have multiple types of identities to allow them to deal with multiple organisations, with some saying they had to manage more than 40 in the course of a year.
"They also talked about security as something that they want (and) that they feel they don't have at the moment," she says. "It was a bit of a latent delight moment for them when they thought they could potentially get some security back, or some control back over their data and how it's shared."
NAB Labs executive general manager Jon Davey told the roundtable he believes there needs to be collaboration across both government and the private sector to achieve the right outcome when it comes to digital identities.
"You don't want to have multiple solutions," he says. "Ultimately, there needs to be a single solution. The question is, how do you get to that point? I think the government has a role to play, (and) I think corporates like Telstra and NAB have a key role to play (and) Australia Post does a tremendous job today around customer identity verification.
The right collaboration
"If you can get the right collaboration to take place and clarity around the specific problem you are going to focus on initially, you can get some great outcomes."
Executive director, home and premium services at Telstra, John Chambers, agrees saying working towards a central goal or a common outcome would produce the best end result.
"For instance, Telstra and NAB could work together and solve some of our problems by allowing customers to have shared identity or identity authentications between our databases, and that could provide some value. But it's not the big step forward we could take if we worked together and particularly (worked with) the government."
Smith, who has been involved in a successful digital ID rollout in New Zealand, confirms that collaboration between the public and private sectors is vital. This ensures any resulting system can be as attractive to consumers as possible, leading to a broad uptake.
"We're not existing in jurisdictions where digital identity is going to be compulsory ... like some of the European countries, so you're going to want to encourage (consumers) to participate in it, but they're going to say 'What's in it for me?', " she says.
Smith says to get a critical mass of people using the system there has to be perceived value in both the public and private sectors. They need to see that it will smooth their interactions with multiple organisations.
"If you end up with pockets of different organisations doing their own thing, it's going to be really hard to get that momentum going and then to get that broader economic benefit that you want," she says.