As part of the big global push to digital ID systems, the Australian state of New South Wales’ government has contracted Thoughtworks, a Canadian tech company, to develop a digital birth certificate system. The plans started last year, when the NSW government announced it was consulting about Digital Birth Certificates as part of its “Government Made Easy” plan.
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The NSW government claims the digital birth certificates will solve some of the problems of physical documents and hopes it will be widely adopted. But digital certificates will not replace the traditional physical documents, they will complement them.
NSW’s assistant registrar of births, deaths and marriages, Amit Padhiar, said the state will be the first in the globe to develop a digital birth certificate system that will provide a safe and secure process for 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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