The NSW government has formally launched its identity support unit, a single point of contact in the state to support citizens and organisations impacted by identity crime.
Called IDSupport NSW, the service will work closely with national identity resilience IDCARE to streamline the replacement and remediation of compromised proof-of-identity documents.
Stolen identity documents being used in both online and real-world criminal activity was “a growing and increasingly sophisticated problem” problem across the world NSW Minister for Customer Service and Minister for Digital Victor Dominello.
The IDSupport NSW unit brings together different parts of government – including police and identity issuing authorities – into a single front door in order to deal with issues of stolen or compromised identity documents.
The identity support unit was announced in October and has been recruiting since at least last August.
“IDSupport NSW will for the first time provide a single point-of-contact for customers who have had their identity compromised, while ensuring we have a coordinated end-to-end privacy incident response service in NSW government,” Mr Dominello said.
“The unit will remove the burden from customers who need to replace identification documents at what we know can be a difficult time,” he said.
Police and Emergency Services minister David Elliott said that IDSupport NSW will be a valuable complement to work of the NSW Police Force in combatting identity and cybercrime, noting that 2021 has been a record year in terms of the number of arrests made by the NSW Police Cybercrime Squad.
“The NSW Police Force will work closely with IDSupport NSW to respond to cases where police find the identity information of innocent victims in the possession or control of criminals, including where it is for sale in illicit online marketplaces,” he said.
“This is an important initiative of the NSW government Identity Strategy that will help protect the people of NSW from the growing scourge of identity crime.”
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