IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

Maheswaram became the first revenue division in the country to use the biometric authentication cards.

Reddy said 11,000 households in the Mandal would get ration on the basis of the cards and it would also be useful for availing a number of other welfare schemes of the state government.

"We are of the opinion that there is a need to review afresh the whole project," said a letter from the All India Passport Employees Association (AIPEA) to Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor.

The testing of Mobile ID (mID) system has been launched in Armenia today. It is an efficient, secure tool for person identification, as well as for signing of any e-documents online.

Mobile ID will be available to a limited number of users and e-service providers while in the test mode.

The ID card represent a plastic card, which includes complete information about its owner and can be used in all spheres of public life.

“An identification center will be established in the Police,” Ghulyan said during a discussion of the program on Electronic Society and Innovations for Stimulating Competitiveness.

He added that there are 61 registration centers in Armenia and all of them will be equipped with modern facilities and software.

He says before adopting biometric technology, organisations should make an assessment of their environments in order to address key requirements like access control.

Terblanche says that biometric technology cannot simply replace passwords in all applications without some serious thought.

Tender documents released to the market reveal that Immigration authorities are seeking to buy commercial-off-the-shelf technology that will allow them to scan through and cross match potentially millions of people to make sure they are claim they say.

Consultation moves forward with position paper release.

The federal government has provided the most comprehensive look at planned legislation for the expansion of its federated digital identity scheme to state and territory governments and the private sector to date.

The Digital Transformation Agency on Thursday released a position paper [pdf] for consultation ahead of the planned introduction of the legislation, dubbed the ‘Trusted Digital Identity Bill’, to parliament in “late 2021”.

OCR Labs has been named as one of Australia’s first ‘entirely private’ accredited digital identity service providers.

Stuart Robert, minister for employment, workforce, skills, small and family business, announced that the Australian-based business was the first to be accredited through the government’s Trusted Digital Identity Framework (TDIF).

Health Minister Tony Abbott, recently suggested that "a central database" could be used to manage Australians' identity on health and Medicare records, but this sparked off fears that only one document would need to be counterfeited in order to establish an identity.

The move to mandate the unique 16-digit health ID number, to be introduced from July, comes despite an earlier Government promise the new "e-health" system would be on an opt-in basis.

The Digital Identity Legislation is hoping to ensure privacy safeguards are in place, such as limiting access to biometric information, but it will include the ability for users to consent to their biometric information being accessed for fraud or security investigations.

Legislation will enter Parliament later this year that will allow non-government entities to provide digital identification services to Australians.

Human Services Minister Chris Ellison, who planned to introduce legislation for the card to the Senate next Thursday, last night agreed to put the plan on hold.

The decision followed the release of a report by the Senate's Finance and Public Administration Committee in which government senators joined with the Opposition to call for a delay and reconsideration of the proposals.

Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey told The Age today that the failure of the Howard Government's Access Card had been his biggest political regret and that he would "absolutely" re-introduce a similar scheme should his party win the election. The scheme would require "fair dinkum consolidation" of government IT agencies.

"Whether you go a card or not, I don't know. Everyone has a Medicare card already, but that's old technology. We're spending $140 billion to $150 billion a year on health and welfare, but what productivity improvements have there been in service delivery? None," Hockey told The Age.

Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon said the move would create an integrated and consistent e-health system, giving confidence to consumers and providers.

Ms Roxon said Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI’s) would be provided in addition to Medicare numbers, creating a single process to identify patients and providers.

The first stage of the scheme, to take effect on July 1, will give every Australian a 16-digit identifying number, known as an individual healthcare identifier (IHI).

A government spokesperson said newly appointed federal chief information officer (CIO) Ann Steward would oversee development of a "whole-of-government" identity management framework to be announced in a new e-government policy scheduled later this year.

This is a despite a Rudd Government promise the new "e-health" system would be on an opt-in basis.

You can opt not to have a tax file number but a spokeswoman for Health Minister Nicola Roxon yesterday confirmed you will not be able to opt out of the new health identity system.

Previously, employees keyed in user-IDs and passwords to log-on to the network. As user-ids and passwords can be easily guessed or cracked, QPS decided to deploy smart card technology which it believes to be more secure.

Perhaps it was the idea of an identity card hitting the headlines again, or maybe all the noise around e-health.

Whatever the reason, this is no short-term phenomenon: we have reached something of a critical point, as many organisations have no choice but to pull this out of the too-hard basket and take a serious stab at getting it right.