Japan / Singapore
Japan says it wants to learn from Singapore’s experience in the rollout of a national digital ID system as the two countries hope to boost their cooperation on digitalisation.
Japan’s Minister for Digital Transformation Taro Kono and his Singaporean counterpart Josephine Teo had talks recently. Reports note the cooperation is based on a bilateral agreement which the two countries entered into last year. The goal is to allow digital collaboration in different areas including digital identity, cybersecurity and related services.
The ministers are reportedly discussing on how they can expand the digital cooperation to areas such as data protection and data-sharing across borders, interoperability, and other digital ID-related aspects.
Australia
The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has released its audit work plan for 2023-24 and will again consider a review of the government’s digital identity programme.
The prospective audit will assess the implementation progress, design, functionality, and allocation and expenditure of funding, including contract management, of the system.
Its scope will cover the Trusted Digital Identity Framework, the country’s digital identity exchanges, and the myGovID service Australians can use to interact with public services online.
The digital ID system has been mooted for a potential review for three years in a row now, as costs for the system previously known as GovPass “have continued to balloon,” according to reports.
United Kingdom
A digital version of the British pound may feature a way to verify the holder’s age and citizenship status, potentially smoothing the purchase of alcohol and tobacco and transactions with government agencies.
The Bank of England has hired digital payments platform Nuggets to develop the digital currency’s privacy and identity features as policy makers step up preparations for the currency dubbed ‘Britcoin.’
Nuggets CEO Alastair Johnson said that its technology would allow verification of a person’s citizenship and for purchasing age-restricted products such as alcohol and cigarettes.
He also said Nuggets’s technology could also reduce companies gathering and using data from purchases and also help enable so-called micro-payments, where people use the digital pound to pay for small items such as an individual newspaper article rather than a full subscription. Bllomberg
Spain
Decentralised identity management technology provider, Gataca, has been appointed by the Spanish Royal Mint (FNMT) as the technology partner to implement Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) technology in a new pilot with Spanish universities.
The initiative will provide a mobile application, Cartera Digital, which allows users to generate and store verifiable credentials, providing secure access to digital services, such as those offered by the participant universities.
The universities are Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Universidad de Murcia (UMU), and Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV).
Among the credentials that will be issued and stored in Cartera Digital are a verifiable ID credential issued by FNMT and a credential called “MyAcademicID” issued by the universities, which will allow access across various student and staff services.
Jordan
Half a million individuals in Jordan have successfully activated their digital identities in the country’s official digital ID verification application, Sanad, according to a Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship statistic, as reported by Jordan News as per Biometric Update.
This is a significant milestone towards the country’s goal of achieving 3.5 million activated digital identities and digitizing all government services by 2025. Jordan’s government recently signed a deal with IrisGuard to help realise those goals.
Global
Identity verification provider Veriff is partnering with Taktikal, an e-signature software suite, to provide identity verification capabilities for their customers on a global scale.
With this partnership, Veriff adds “an extra layer of safety and security to Taktikal’s automated onboarding and workflow processes through the strengthened authentication of digital signatures, and enables the company to expand its customer base to new geographic regions.”
Taktikal’s Smartflows solution “allows organizations to build, visualize, and automate their customer-facing processes in one platform, such as contracts, onboarding solutions with built-in tools for Know Your Customer (KYC) and regulatory compliance.”
Italy
Italy’s digital identity system is getting a new service provider and manager, certification authority Intesi Group.
The Public Digital Identity System (SPID) allows Italian citizens to access public and private online services. The registration is managed by digital identity providers authorized and supervised by Agency for Digital Italy (AgID) and includes private companies, some of which charge for ID activation.
The Agency announced on Tuesday it has authorised Intesi Group to issue SPID as a digital identity manager. The Milan-based company offers electronic signatures, digital identity management and authentication solutions. According to its website, the company is certified as a Qualified Trust Services Provider (QTSP) under the European eIDAS regulation for electronic identification and trust services.
Sri Lanka
The Sri Lankan government has announced that the collection of biometrics as part of the enrolment process for the issuance of national digital ID cards will begin soon.
The State Minister for Technology says there are also plans to enable access to digital documents using the single ID system, reports Adaderana.
The biometrics to be collected will include face, fingerprint and iris scans.
Poland
Government-issued digital IDs in Poland will be accepted as the equivalence for the plastic version from July 14, per a LinkedIn post by Jaroslaw Sygitowicz, co-founder of ID proofing startup Authologic, and reported by Biometric Update.
The exec claims the novelty will make Poland “the largest EU country with a government-issued digital ID equal to its plastic counterpart.”
“It is a historic moment and signifies a major change in the way identity proofing is done.”
