Supporting Australia's Digital Trust Ecosystem

The OpenID Foundation's Australian Digital Trust Community Group (ADT CG) has submitted comments to Australia's Productivity Commission on its Interim Report covering data and digital technology policy, demonstrating the Foundation’s commitment to supporting policy development in Australia through expert technical guidance and industry collaboration.

The ADT CG serves as a neutral platform for professionals working on digital identity and trust systems. It brings together stakeholders from technology vendors, industry sectors, consumer groups, and government to collaborate on standards based digital trust services in Australia.

The official submission to Australia's Productivity Commission, including the letter and the exhibit with details on all the areas that the ADT CG has provided feedback on, can be found HERE. 

The OpenID Foundation would like to thank the Australian Government's opportunity to contribute to this important policy discussion. This collaboration builds on our ongoing partnership with Australian authorities, including their co-funding of security analysis on FAPI 2.0, demonstrating shared commitment to advancing secure digital infrastructure.

Some of the key areas the ADT has commented on include:

• Digital identity framing: Policy should support multiple digital identity providers using open international standards rather than favouring one government system. This approach allows consumer choice, increases competition, reduces costs, and enables interoperability across sectors and borders. Specifications like OpenID Connect and FAPI 2.0 are examples of standards already deployed in Australia.
• Data minimization: Encourage "assertion-based sharing" as an alternative pathway, where organizations share verified claims (e.g., "over 18") rather than raw data. This approach reduces cybersecurity costs, addresses consent fatigue.
• Incentives: Data sharing ecosystems need business models and value exchange mechanisms for participants, not just intrinsic incentives. Shared Signals is an example of where organizations need incentives to share real-time risk information about compromised accounts or sessions to create an effective "nervous system" for data security.

The OpenID Foundation also thanks the ADT CG members for their thought leadership and technical expertise in developing these comprehensive recommendations, which reflect the collective insights of Australia's digital trust community.

Olaf Grewe, Head of Product, Digital Identity & Access at National Australia Bank and Co-Chair of the ADT CG, said: “When government and industry collaborate on establishing the regulatory framework. considering customer and commercial imperatives, and leveraging proven international standards like OpenID Connect and FAPI, we create ecosystems that are more secure, interoperable, and competitive.”

Membership in the ADT CG is open to all stakeholders interested in advancing interoperable, standards-based digital trust in Australia. The group operates through regular meetings and maintains a continuously updated topic roadmap based on emerging challenges and learnings from the Australian market. 

About the OpenID Foundation

The OpenID Foundation (OIDF) is a global open standards body committed to helping people assert their identity wherever they choose. Founded in 2007, we are a community of technical experts leading the creation of open identity standards that are secure, interoperable, and privacy preserving. The Foundation’s OpenID Connect standard is now used by billions of people across millions of applications. In the last five years, the Financial Grade API has become the standard of choice for Open Banking and Open Data implementations, allowing people to access and share data across entities. Today, the OpenID Foundation’s standards are the connective tissue to enable people to assert their identity and access their data at scale, the scale of the internet, enabling “networks of networks” to interoperate globally. Individuals, companies, governments and non-profits are encouraged to join or participate. Find out more at openid.net.