Of course Victor Dominello’s last ministerial speech was about Digital ID

Outgoing NSW minister for customer service and digital government, Victor Dominello, gave his final ministerial address at a Tech Council of Australia (TCA) breakfast on Thursday. Dominello took the opportunity to champion a move towards a decentralised national digital identity credentials one last time, at least while in office.

Dominello has been a long-time advocate for the digitising of credentials and documents in Australia. These efforts resulted in New South Wales becoming the first state in Australia to offer digital driver’s licences. According to Dominello, this has seen an 80% adoption rate throughout the state.

He has also been an advocate for the digitisation of birth certificates (DBC), which have been in the works since 2021. A trial is set to begin in NSW in April.

Dominello has also long been vocal about taking this up a notch to a federal level. And there have been some baby steps forward. In the last month alone we saw Dominello work with the minister for government services, Bill Shorten, to allow NSW’s digital driver’s licence to live in the MyGov wallet and app. Similarly, digital Medicare Cards will now have a home within the Service NSW app.

And just last week a Data and Digital Ministers Meeting in Melbourne resulted in an agreement for a “nationally coordinated approach, giving Australians access and control over the use of digital IDs, and making it easy for citizens to deal with government.”

Bittersweet introducing @VictorDominello to some real coffee at Pellegrini’s today to farewell him after his last Data & Digital Ministers meeting.

Excellent working together recently to secure easy access to govt IDs on myGov and Service NSW app.

Wish him all the best. pic.twitter.com/FX0Lemcx9X

— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) February 24, 2023

One last plug for Digital Identity from Victor Dominello

It’s currently unclear what future career plans Dominello has in the pipeline. But for now he chose to use his last ministerial address to spruik and explain the benefits of a digital identity scheme to members of the Tech Council of Australia.

The way Dominello envisions it is obtaining an ID through three sources: your passport, driver’s licence and birth certificate. From there, the idea is that you only ever need to share the information you want to third parties.

“You hold the golden key, so nobody else can open it without your permission and consent,” Dominello said at the event.

For example, if you had to sign for a package you could show your digital ID to a delivery driver or at the Post Office and have it verified without revealing your birth date. This scenario also works for showing you are over 18 at a pub or simply having to prove you are who you say you are.

But Dominello also stated that there needs to be an adequate value proposition, and used NSW digital licenses as a use case.

According to the minister, it’s not the idea of being pulled over or carded that has resulted in 4.4 million people downloading a digital ID, but the convenience of being able to leave your wallet at home.

“What is the value proposition of digital ID? Why do I think this is going to be adopted at the same pace as 80% digital licence? The value proposition is your privacy,” Dominello said.

Dominello used the example of corporations asking for your driver’s licence or passport and people being less inclined to share this information considering the rise of data breaches and leaks. 

“Why are you giving a copy of your driver’s licence in the first place? Why do they need your signature? Why do they need your date of birth? They don’t need this stuff,” Dominello said.

“Instead I will sign in with my digital ID. Therefore my privacy and security is the incentive, the value proposition.”

And the timing is quite pertinent on this, with media reports this week regarding the amount of personal information that real estate agents collect – and often store on databases – on renters.

The lack of Australian data privacy laws, as well as aforementioned breaches in 2022 (including LJ Hooker) is cause for concern.

In addition to it being a cybersecurity issue, Dominello also says that Digital ID is a customer service play, especially compared to current government apps that require a lot of time and fuss.

“It also makes it that when it comes to service delivery… the customer is truly in control,” Dominello said.

According to Dominello, the focus of a scheme like this must be the customer, “So the customer genuinely – not just in language – informs the centre of [this] rather than rather than governments and banks.”

Considering Dominello’s passion for digital ID – even pushing it in his final hours before his ministerial position goes into caretaker mode – it will be surprising if he doesn’t stay involved in some way in the future.

It will certainly be interesting to see who picks up the torch.