Vic & WA Governments join identity theft protection scheme

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 10 July 2011 16:32

IT Policy - Regulation

Victoria and Western Australia have signed on to the Document Verification Service (DVS), designed to protect Australians against identity theft.

The scheme allows authorised government agencies to cross-check identity documents with each other. Announcing the Victorian and WA Government's participation in the scheme, attorney general Robert McClelland, said: "The Document Verification Service significantly improves protection of people's identity by allowing documents commonly used as proof of identity to be quickly checked electronically by the issuing agency.

"For example, if you are using your Australian Passport as proof of identity to apply for a copy of a NSW driver license, the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority will now be able to instantly verify the authenticity of the passport with the Australian Passport Office. This ensures that documents haven't been cancelled or personal information falsified."

He added: "Importantly, no DVS information is retained on any central database. Its purpose is to allow authorities to verify the authenticity of documents issued by other agencies."

While praiseworthy, WA & Victorian Government participation in the scheme has hardly been expeditious: the scheme was put in place in 2006.

The DVS is part of the National Identity Security Strategy, an initiative of the Howard Government. According to the AG's Identity Security web page "The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) considered identity security at its special meeting on Counter-Terrorism on 27 September 2005. COAG agreed to the development and implementation of a national identity security strategy, underpinned by an inter-governmental agreement (IGA), the development and implementation of a national document verification service to combat the misuse of false and stolen identities, and to investigate the means by which reliable, consistent and nationally inter-operable biometric security measures could be adopted by all jurisdictions'¦[and] The prime minister, premiers and chief ministers signed the IGA at the COAG meeting on 13 April 2007."