MATTR scores NSW govt deal as technology partner for Digital ID

The New South Wales government has named Auckland’s MATTR the technology partner for its Digital ID and Verifiable Credentials program, last updated in 2021.

In November last year, the NSW government announced a pilot in which decentralised and locally stored IDs will be created by the Service NSW app.

These will allow users to renew their Working with Children Check remotely, and offer the ID as a proof-of-age for alcohol purchases.

The decentralised ID is not related to blockchain, the company told CRN Australia.

Other use cases for verifiable credentials can be storing qualifications and course completion certificates locally in digital wallets, which MATTR has implemented as a pilot for ten Canadian academic institutions in Ontario.

Others include personal identity credentials such as licenses, permits, insurance documents as well as entitlement cards and more.

“We are proud to support this ground-breaking project that will offer the people of NSW more security and control over their personal information and more convenience in their daily lives,” Dr Claire Barber, chief executive of MATTR said.

“Our verifiable credentials solution helps organisations who are looking for ways to create confidence in digital interactions. We apply data minimisation principles that enable individuals to share the information they need to, without oversharing, and which avoid the creation of unnecessary data ‘honeypots’ that can then be targeted by bad actors,” she added.

MATTR will provide standards based and interoperable products that enable the verifiable credentials, via NSW government apps.

This includes the MATTR VII application programming interface for credentials generation, management, and verification, and the MATTR Pi toolkit for integration with existing applications.

The value of the contract with the NSW government was not disclosed by MATTR.

MATTR is backed by telco incumbent Spark, and operates independently.

According to the news on Connecting Aotearoa New Zealand’s Channel