Australia
The federal government’s slow movement on digital ID risks creating “digital rail gauges … where a credential issued by one jurisdiction won’t be accepted in another,” a review of myGov, which also covered digital identity, has warned.
The report highlights how slow decision-making at the federal level, along with a lack of legislative support for digital ID, have left Australians vulnerable.
It also tackles clunky processes, lack of inclusion, and fragmentation of digital ID, which it said created confusion for agencies on which to adopt, and for citizens on which to use.
The report found that even among myGov users, digital ID usage lags: “Whilst 2.4 million myGov accounts have been linked to a digital identity, actual usage is low: on average less than 8000 users choose digital identity to sign in each day, which equates to around one percent of total sign-ins,” it said.
The report also points to usability challenges, and calls for improvements – such as having myGovID appear as a popup when identity verification is required within myGov, and ensuring users don’t “get stuck when encountering errors”.
Kenya
Kenyan President William Ruto is attempting to reinvigorate efforts to launch a digital ID system as part of his government’s digitisation agenda.
In 2019 the country created the National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS), a national register which was supposed to provide a unique and permanent identification number, known as a ‘Huduma Namba’, to each citizen in addition to an ID card.
Yet several years into the project, the Huduma Namba has yet to be rolled out among the population at large.
Ruto said he has asked the Ministry of Information, Communications and The Digital Economy (ICT) “to work on digital identity so that the big Huduma thing that never was — we can finally have as Kenyans a digital identity.”
He added that he had informed Eliud Owalo, Kenya’s cabinet secretary for the ICT, that “Kenyans must be able to identify themselves digitally” by the end of the year.
Africa
Digital ID verification company Smile Identity has highlighted increasing interest among African countries in developing critical digital identity infrastructure.
This trend, the firm’s new report notes, is underscored by the sustained investment focus on digital technologies despite a generally difficult economic experience for the continent in 2022.
The report also details the important role of biometric onboarding processes for businesses especially at a time when financial fraud rates on the continent are escalating.
Although fraud rates stabilized in the second half of 2022, they reached an all-time high of 28 percent of all KYC checks including an element of attempted fraud for the year overall, with face mismatches and use of stolen IDs identified as being among the leading forms of ID fraud.
This report noted that an average 50 percent of fraud incidents go unnoticed with textual KYC alone.
Biometrics, combined with ID verification, according to Smile, are the best baseline for combating ID fraud, citing the example that crypto platforms which use its ID verification technology for KYC have 46 percent less fraud than other industries.
Canada
Trulioo is offering a suite of global person and business verification solutions with no-code workflow building, low-code integrations all in one platform. With one contract Trulioo customers can access personally identifiable information matching, Identity Document Verification, Utility Data for proof of address, Business Verification for in-depth person-of-significant-control and ultimate-beneficial-owner verification, watchlist screening and ongoing monitoring, and anti-fraud capabilities.
United Kingdom
A new accreditation system for digital identity products is leading to the rapid approval of new products, indicating high demand, according to Erika Lewis, director for Cyber Security and Digital Identity, at the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), via Biometric Update.
The DCMS has been working with the UK Accreditation Service to recognise five certification bodies. They have now certified 33 products against the trust framework.
“The British Standards Institute has told us that they’ve never seen a new certification scheme prompt so much interest so quickly,” said Lewis.
“I think that is testament to the work my lovely team is doing, but I think it’s also testament to the fact that this is a real market where there is a real need.”
Products are already in use for the UK’s Right to Rent and Right to Work Check as well as background checks. Lewis quoted data from recruitment firm Reed Screening that has found its hiring checks are down to four minutes and that employers and employees are saving around 30,000 hours a year with digital checks.
United States
ID R&D, a Mitek company, has been awarded a patent for to securing virtual assistant and chatbot sessions on a mobile device. The timing of the patent award comes at a time when ChatGPT is reaching over 100 million monthly active users and concerns around its function and security are mounting.
ID R&D’s method involves the collection of multiple biometrics throughout a chat session without added prompts or tasks for the user – enabling an intelligent chatbot to continuously confirm a person’s identity while maintaining a natural user experience. The firm said this will become a critical feature as intelligent chatbots go mainstream to combat fraud, especially with consumer spending via chatbots worldwide reaching $142 billion in 2024.
Thailand
Passengers are now allowed to use digital IDs to verify their identity when boarding domestic flights.
Traisulee Taisaranakul, deputy government spokeswoman, said digital IDs must be from mobile applications developed by state agencies only, such as D.DOPA or the DLT QR Licence developed by the Department of Land Transport.
Philippines
The Philippine Statistics Authority has printed more than 50 million Philippine Identification System physical ID cards (PhilIDs) and ePhilIDs combined, it reported Friday, meaning it has covered nearly half of the Philippine population.
According to the 2020 census, the Philippines had a population of 109,035,343 persons. The PSA said, 30,558,332 PhilIDs had been issued, of which 23,256,884 had been delivered as of Jan. 31, 2023.
Some 19,703,727 ePhilIDs had also been issued. The ePhilID is the digital version of the PhilID which is printed on a piece of paper.
