Teachers and childcare workers will be among the first able to perform digital identity checks in New South Wales when the state government launches a new option for renewing Working with Children Checks on Monday.
The Australian-first renewal option, to be announced by Customer Service and Digital Government minister Jihad Dib, arrives after more than a year of testing as part of the state government’s NSW Digital ID program.
It will remove the need for anyone renewing their clearance to work with children to attend a Service NSW service centre and provide copies of physical identity documents to prove their identity.
Applicants will instead have the option of using photo verification and liveness checking technology embedded within the Service NSW app to take a selfie and conduct a one-to-one match of their image against a file photo.
“Being able to renew a Working with Children Check online will save a lot of time for our essential workers and remove the manual process of presenting documents in-person to prove their identity,” Mr Dib said.
Some 1.9 million people in NSW, including those in occupations like nursing, teaching, and childcare, currently have WWCC clearance. With checks lasting five years, as many as 1,000 renewals take place each day.
Removing the need to attend a service centre will be particularly beneficial to those who live and work in remote areas and can’t conveniently get to a Service NSW Centre, according to the minister.
Both driver’s licence and photo cards will be accepted for online renewals of the Working with Children Check (WWCC), a decision the government said had been made to include an additional one million residents.
Much like the myGovID credential offered by the federal government, the photo verification technology behind online WWCC renewals discards the photo of the person once it has been verified.
The biometric technology, which is also used for the NSW Digital ID, has been sourced from BRYK, a Melbourne-based company, and has an accuracy of 13,000 to one, according to the company.
The NSW Digital ID has been in development by the Department of Customer Service since at least 2020, with work beginning under former minister Victor Dominello well before last year’s Optus data breach prompted a rethink of stored credentials.
It has been designed to hand back control of sensitive personal information, with users able to manage and share their credentials, including private sector credentials like qualifications at a later stage.
In November last year, Service NSW began the first of six planned pilots of the NSW Digital ID with WWCCs, followed by two more pilots in January and February: one to test the digital identity with online alcohol orders and the other on Service NSW transactions.
But despite Service NSW planning for six trials, no further trials began following the arrival of the Minns government in March. Just 66 users also took part in the trials that did take place, as reported by InnovationAus.com.
On Monday, Mr Dib described the launch of online WWCC renewals as paving the way for the use of future government services that rely on the foundations introduced to support the NSW Digital ID system.
“This is a significant step towards a digital ID and sets the foundation for renewing other credentials online, helping residents access services faster, easier, and with confidence their personal information is protected,” Mr Dib said.
Last week, researchers at the UTS Human Technology Institute, which has been working with Service NSW to apply principles from its proposed facial recognition technology model law, called for legislated guardrails ahead of a wider rollout of NSW Digital ID.
