The Australian state of New South Wales has engaged Thoughtworks, a Canadian tech firm, to design a digital birth certificate system as part of a larger worldwide push towards digital ID systems. The ideas began last year, when the NSW government revealed that as part of its “Government Made Easy” agenda, it will be consulting on Digital Birth Certificates.
The NSW government claims that digital birth certificates will overcome some of the issues that traditional birth certificates have, and it expects that they will be widely used. However, digital certificates will complement rather than replace traditional physical papers.
Amit Padhiar, NSW’s assistant registrar of births, deaths, and marriages, claimed the state will be the first in the world to build a digital birth certificate system that will allow for safe and secure identification, verification, and authentication.
“This exercise is about delivering greater convenience to our customers, but it is critically important to do so while protecting their information and meeting other key criteria such as accessibility and ease-of-use across multiple devices and platforms and providing the ability to opt-in and opt-out,” he said in a press release.
“Every industry is facing pressure to become more digitally nimble, and we are incredibly proud to be working with the NSW Government on such a momentous step forward into our digital future – one that will set a new standard for other states and countries to follow,” a representative from Thoughtworks said.
The system will run on browsers, Android, and iOS.
NSW is also set to launch a digital ID system for citizens to access government services.
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