Just two months after announcing a new service set to revolutionise national and global digital driver licence authentication, Austroads has completed pilot testing of the platform’s beta version.
The Digital Trust Service (DTS) provides participants with public keys representing Australian state and territory issuing authorities that can be used to verify mobile driver licences (mDLs).
Austroads completed its testing of the DTS with two international events in October, the Identity and Verifiable Credentials Summit 2024 and the 10th International Interoperability Test Event, that hosted over 450 attendees from the European Commission, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), the Association of European Vehicle and Driver Registration Authorities (EReg), government and banking executives and representatives from identity and wallet providers.
The trials determined that Australian, American and European security provisions and biometric devices were able to authenticate both state and nationally-issued credentials.
“The DTS gives relying parties the assurance that the mDL was issued by a true issuing authority and the trust that it complies with international mDL standards for privacy, security, and interoperability,” Geoff Allan, Austroads chief executive, said.
“Our testing demonstrated that we can now scale the DTS across Australia. We hope that every state and territory will have mDLs or digital driver licences within the next 18 months and that their keys will be in the DTS.
“At these events, leading wallet providers and verifiers demonstrated that their technologies could seamlessly work together. All participants were able to host their cryptographic keys on the Austroads DTS, with 350 tests conducted by 21 providers. The results were a resounding success.
“We look forward to working with government stakeholders and with the industry in 2025 to co-develop the system that will work best for all Australians.”
The test determined that 73 per cent of reported transactions used the Austroads DTS while in its pre-production environment, amounting to more than 450 transactions. There was a total of 618 transactions that tested several credential types as defined by the international standard ISO 18013, including:
- 589 transactions involving mDLs,
- 143 transactions involving photo IDs,
- 44 transactions involving vehicle registration certificates, and
- 39 transactions involving mobile international certificates of vaccination.
“Digital licensing gives more power to the people who hold that digital licence to decide how they are going to use that for identity proofing in a way that is more safe and secure and privacy respecting,” Don Young, Senior Director, Digital Strategy and Advisory from the Northern Territory Government, said.
