The Digital Transformation Agency is readying for a “significant expansion” of its digital identity program over the next six months and will also soon launch a review of the digital capabilities of government departments.
The government allocated $250 million in the October budget to GovPass, more than doubling the total spend on the ongoing digital identity project. This funding will go towards the expansion of the government’s own digital identity offering, myGovID, and for work to extend the scheme to private sector organisations.
GovPass has been running for more than five years and is the government’s effort to provide identity verification across a range of government and private sector services. The project includes four key elements, including a framework to accredit providers and the actual identity providers. There are currently only two accredited digital identity providers: myGovID and Australia Post’s offering.
With the funding boost, the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) is getting ready for a “significant expansion” of its digital identity play and is looking to recruit a number of new team members to work on it, along with its ongoing work to launch a new version of myGov.
There are more than four listings on the Digital Marketplace for work on GovPass, including for a program executive director and a communications support officer.
The DTA is also upping its public awareness efforts around the scheme, with a new website and recent blog post spruiking its benefits
This is despite the federal Opposition recently calling for the brakes to be pumped on GovPass following a series of delays.
Applications are open for the digital identity program executive director until 11 November. With the program undergoing a “significant expansion”, the director will lead the program and will be “accountable for the portfolio-wide buy in and commitment of program stakeholders for the successful delivery of program outcomes”.
The director will also be tasked with ensuring “all projects are delivering on target and are efficiently allocating resources”.
The GovPass scheme has been plagued with continual delays. By the middle of this year there had been plans to have myGovID integrated with myGov and to have incorporated biometrics technology, but both of these are yet to be rolled out.
Just nine sellers were able to apply for the director position, but it’s unclear who these are.
The DTA is also on the hunt for a communications support officer to cover the myGov and digital identity programs and produce media responses, briefings, newsletters and blogs.
There are also job listings for program coordinators and delivery managers for both schemes.
All of the roles are set to start at the end of the month and run until at least June next year.
In a recent select committee report, Labor senators rejected the government’s plan to accelerate the GovPass scheme, but it appears this has not been heeded.
“While we support improvements to the government-owned and operated digital identity platform, and strongly support the extension of those learnings to the private sector where appropriate, we believe there is clearly a lot more work to be done to build the infrastructure, as well as educating the public on what these reforms look like,” they said.
“Prioritising expediency over care isn’t the best way to achieve this.”
Another listing on the Digital Marketplace also reveals that the DTA will soon undertake a review of government departments’ digital capabilities, with the help of a private contractor.
The listing, which closes on Friday, is for a review to survey government agencies to establish a baseline of the government’s digital capability across technology, process, people, policy and alliances.
The review will survey the current state of play, attempt to find a unified view of digital capability in government, provide a benchmark to measure progress, and identify inhibitors and opportunities.
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