DTA allows Govpass test to prevent ID fraud

The digital security company Idemia has been chosen by the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) in order to create a proof-of-life test that would prevent the creation of fraudulent digital identities.

The France-basedcompany, previously known as Morpho, deals with weeding out impostors and fakes that could compromise the integrity of the government’s authentication credential.

This credential, myGovID, is to become the DTA’s national federal ecosystem of identity providers (IdPs) and it will include banks and state governments. Currently, it is managed by the Australian Taxation Officer, the Commonwealth’s IdP, on behalf of the government.

The IdP is working on the Govpass’ identity exchange, the focus being put on the verification of an individual’s credentials without revealing their identity to service providers. At the same time, the DTA has searched for an image capture mechanism that could integrate with myGovID so that the end result would be the prevention of an individual using another person’s photograph when creating a digital identity on either a mobile, tablet or desktop device.

This method is meant to capture images and videos and to check for motion when verifying the liveness of an individual against an identity document such as a passport or drivers licence.

The DTA prepares the Govpass digital identity pilot for October 2018, which will be followed by trials for business and welfare recipients starting from December, as well as as a pilot that enables individuals to create a My Health Record from March 2019. Moreover, myGovID credential is believed to replace the ATOs AUSkey authentication solution by March 2020.