Centrality joins New Zealand digital identity collective
To stay up-to-date on the progress of Centrality’s ecosystem, follow us on Twitter and our Telegram Announcements channel, plus join our community on Centrality’s Official Telegram, Instagram, Reddit and Facebook.
Centrality has joined Digital Identity NZ, a collective organisation that promotes a safe and decentralised digital identity solution for all New Zealanders.
Digital identity is currently one of the most significant trends in technology, as private and public sectors accelerate to keep up with demand for a trusted digital identity protocol.
Digital Identity NZ is the country’s newest not-for-profit organisation, bringing together private and government organisations working to make digital identity easier and more secure for everyone in New Zealand, its executive director Andrew Weaver explains.
Digital identity is now commonplace across a number of everyday transactions, such as signing on to a website to buy a product or service, visiting a hospital, or getting a tax refund.
Not only does digital identity offer convenience, it also provides security. A decentralised identity solution puts people, rather than organisations, in control of their personal information. This helps protect people against global data breaches, such as the Marriott incident, which increasingly frequent the centralised world.
“There are now hundreds of times a week people need some form of digital identity and there are so many ways of providing it. That complexity can be challenging for us as customers or users of that technology, and there are also questions of security, privacy and consent that are becoming increasingly important for us all to consider,” says Weaver.
An identity protocol is the foundation of our digital life and must be ubiquitous, according to Centrality GM of Strategic Partnerships Andy Higgs.
“All New Zealanders should be able to have a single digital identity that they control — we call this self sovereign identity.”
“Individual data is taonga and personal information should not be available for sale or controlled by a corporate or government agency. With a decentralised solution, you’re not relying on anyone else to keep it safe,” says Higgs.
“We know we need to work together with both the private and public sector because a self sovereign identity solution will need to be interoperable and ubiquitous,” says Higgs.
NZTech, an umbrella organisation representing some 500 New Zealand technology organisations, has backed Digital Identity NZ to encourage a united approach across the entire sector and its stakeholders.
SingleSource, a venture in the Centrality ecosystem, also joins Digital Identity NZ. A pioneer in decentralised identity and risk scoring, SingleSource has recently been accredited by the Australian and New Zealand government agencies as a service provider.
The company has been accredited as a Document Verification Service (DVS) Gateway Service Provider (GSP) by the Australian government. This follows the company’s accreditation in June 2018 by New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) as an Intermediary to the Confirmation Service. This means SingleSource has been approved to electronically verify passport, citizenship and driver’s license information directly against the New Zealand Government’s database. SingleSource is the only decentralised identity protocol approved by the DIA. Now 30 million people on both sides of the Tasman have the ability to have their identities verified by SingleSource’s secure blockchain technology.
To stay up-to-date on the progress of Centrality’s ecosystem, follow us on Twitter and our Telegram Announcements channel, plus join our community on Centrality’s Official Telegram, Instagram, Reddit and Facebook.
