What is Digital ID?
A secure way to verify your ID online.
We’re all used to providing documents – for example our driver licence, passport or birth certificate – to verify our ID. This is often a requirement for many activities, such as changing jobs, rental applications, or to take out a phone plan and to access many government services.
Handing over copies of ID documents in this digital age means copies of our documents are stored in many places, putting our data at risk of cyber theft.
Digital IDs:
- reduce the risk of cyber theft
- are a secure and convenient way to verify who you are online to access services.
- allow you to verify your ID online using existing government issued ID documents, without creating a new ID number or document.
- replace the need to repeatedly give copies of your documents and stop the oversharing of information to access services.
- give you control over what information is shared by asking for your consent before sharing information with a service you want to access.
Digital technologies play an increasingly important role in everyday life, and we need to better protect our personal information.
What are the benefits?
Digital ID presents a significant economic and security opportunity for Australia.
For you
With a Digital ID, there’s no need to run around searching for physical ID documents and getting to a government shopfront or business. You can do your life admin from anywhere, at any time.
Digital ID means less of your personal information will need to be stored by businesses and organisations, significantly reducing the copies of your documents that put you at risk of data theft.
It provides a more convenient way to log into online services rather than having multiple usernames and passwords.
Digital ID won’t replace your ID documents or the way you access services now, but it will give you an easier and more secure way to verify your ID online.
Digital ID means more services can be provided online with a secure way to verify your ID wherever you are, at any time.
For industry
Businesses don’t want to store information from your ID documents unless they have to. They just need to know that who they’re dealing with is legitimate, not an imposter.
Digital ID takes care of the ID verification without the need for customers to overshare documents and for businesses to store personal data.
Using Digital ID, instead of sharing documents, significantly reduces the risk of data theft for businesses and their customers.
Expanding the use of Digital IDs means there will be fewer copies of Australians’ sensitive identity documents at risk of compromise in the types of data breaches that have impacted millions of Australians in recent years.
Three-quarters of Australians feel data breaches are one of the biggest privacy risks they face today, according to the 2023 Australian Community Attitudes Towards Privacy Survey from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
Almost half (47%) of survey respondents were told by an organisation that their personal information was involved in a data breach in the previous year. Almost a third (29%) said they had to replace key identity documents.
By reducing the impact of future data breaches, we can help protect people and businesses from scams and identity crime, which has an annual economic impact of more than $3.1 billion each year, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology.
A whole of economy Digital ID system offers significant economic benefits and opportunities to reduce costs and time associated with verifying ID.
For government
Digital ID is an enabler for better government services provided online.
Providing more government services online makes getting what you need from government easier, especially for remote communities and Australians with disability. An accessible user-friendly, highly trusted and secure ID solution will deliver more proactive and personalised services.
These benefits include:
- streamlined government service delivery (e.g. reducing the time it takes to obtain a Tax File Number from 28 days to just 10 minutes)
- faster assistance from government and business for people impacted by scams or other situations where they lose access to their identity documents, such people impacted by natural disasters or family violence.
- Download this information as a factsheet: Digital ID - What is it and benefits factsheet (PDF 679.34 KB)
