Agencies federate identity to a central layer (via Digital ID); central layer holds single source of truth for citizen-managed attributes. Agencies read; citizen writes once.
ORGANISATIONS
STUDY
“User experience suffers from incomplete federation; agencies maintain parallel identity stores; user effort is duplicated.”
— ANAO Performance Audit of myGov · 2023
STUDY
“Federation and data-quality failures contributed materially to harm in the Online Compliance Initiative (Robodebt).”
— Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme · 2023
STUDY
“75% of Australians think government online services need improvement; 40% report negative experiences with myGov.”
— myGov User Audit 2023 · 2023
NOTES
ANAO finding + Robodebt RC corroborate same root cause
Identity Reconciliation Service
When a citizen authenticates with valid documents whose attributes diverge (name spelling, document type), reconcile the records instead of locking the citizen out. Manual escalation only when divergence exceeds a defined threshold.
Cross-Service Contact-Detail Propagation
Single contact-details record at the myGov layer. Each linked agency reads on demand; updates propagate immediately to phone, email, address and bank details across all linked services.
Auto-detected (or toggled) simplified interface for older citizens: large type, single PIN, no security-question gate, phone-callback 2FA, immediate human escalation. Built once at the myGov layer; inherited by linked services.
Overseas Australian Access Mode
Alternative identity verification for the ~1M Australians overseas: video-ID with consular endorsement or Digital ID via ImmiAccount channel. Documented public path so users know it before they're locked out.