Recommended Reforms:

· Dispel the bogeyman of the Australia Card once and for all, reframe the digital citizen experience around what rather than who. Instead of abstract open-ended “identity”, concentrate on concrete objective credentials, and the public-private infostructure that will enable citizens to prove specific facts and figures about themselves.

· Enable citizens to prove their bona fides digitally, upgrade from plastic cards to electronic verifiable credentials. The technology exists today for government-issued certificates to be issued in digital form, and loaded to smart phone wallets. Provide citizens the option of having digital versions of their standard Medicare card, driver licence, health identifiers and birth certificates, without any change to these credentials’ meaning or rules.

· Upgrade from QR codes to modern radio frequency “tap and prove” methods. Most government mobile credentials today use QR codes as the presentation mode, but this technology is vulnerable to illicit copying and counterfeiting. Radio frequency technology, as used in paywave, is faster, far more secure, and increasingly available in mobile phones for nonpayments applications. U.S. and European governments are working with mobile phone companies and telcos to make licences and COVID vaccination certificates available to mobile data wallets. Australia should join this movement, leveraging the new mobile driver licence standard ISO 18013-5.