News - Views sought on online authentication for

Views sought on online authentication for e-government

March 2003

The widespread use of the Internet as a tool of communication is due in part to the degree of anonymity with which you can view websites, express opinions and have online conversations with people you have never met. For most online activities, people are quite comfortable with this state of affairs. Indeed most online government services involve publicly available information that you can freely obtain without identifying yourself. As more sophisticated services come on stream, however, security and privacy rank alongside the convenience and comfort of anonymity.

Any online service involving personal or financial information has to protect people’s privacy by providing a reliable, secure and trustworthy means for them to access this kind of information over the Internet. And you can’t ensure this without a robust way of identifying exactly who it is you are dealing with online. In fact there are some services that may never be fully available online: there may be no substitute for face-to-face contact when issuing a firearms licence, for example.

The process of establishing the identities of the parties to an online transaction is called ‘online authentication’. The E-government Unit is asking for feedback by 7 April 2003 from the public and government agencies on a number of concepts for how this might happen across government. The Unit will also be talking with a wide variety of interest and community groups during the consultation period and during the later development phases. Results of the consultation will be one of the inputs into a recommendation to Cabinet in mid-2003 for a common approach to online authentication across government.

For more information contact:authentication@ssc.govt.nz.