Digital Identity: A governance framework for Service NSW

Commercial, government and private interest in facial recognition technology (FRT) has grown rapidly in recent years as the potential use cases for the technology increases. While FRT can bring benefits to society, FRT must only be used in responsible ways that uphold human rights, including the right to privacy and non-discrimination. 

HTI has received funding from the James Martin Institute to work with Service NSW on the responsible implementation of facial verification systems as part of its digital identity and credential services projects which fall under the NSW Government’s Identity Strategy. Governments must adopt effective structural governance mechanisms to ensure the safety, transparency and accountability of these new services. Our proposed project targets these structural governance mechanisms and ensures relevant and impactful engagement with government to implement best-practice use of FRT. 

Specifically, we aim to work with Service NSW to adopt effective policy, training, and assurance frameworks to guarantee that, when the Department of Customer Services uses this technology, it does so in ways that meet legal requirements, ethical standards and human rights obligations. This project’s findings and outputs may be applied across other NSW Government areas, especially in service delivery and law enforcement, to the greatest benefit of our communities.  

Methodology 

The work includes four targeted stages -

1. Consultation: Research and Interviews  
   
   HTI will conduct a detailed consultation to understand the current state of play regarding Service NSW’s digital identity initiative, and especially the protections it has already put in place to comply with the NSW AI Assurance Framework.  
    
2.  Governance and accountability 
   
   HTI will co-design a governance and oversight approach for Service NSW’s use of FRT, which is consistent with the NSW AI Assurance Framework. 
    
3.  Education and Training  
   
   HTI will co-design a training strategy for Service NSW’s use of FRT, including staff with policy responsibility for Service NSW’s FRT activities; staff who manage implementation and oversight; and frontline staff who oversee customer engagement with Service NSW digital identity products. 
    
4.  Evaluation and Communication
   
   HTI will produce a brief Policy Insights Paper including evaluation of the practical policy lessons learnt during this project.
   JMI and HTI will join to share our findings and advocate for the project outcomes across Service NSW, other NSW Government agencies, and a broader public audience

Transcript

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Nella Soeterboek:
The University of Technology Sydney is a technological university. We're world renowned in terms of our teaching
and research around technological developments

Professor Edward Santow:  
The Human Technology Institute is building a future that applies human values to new technologies. Service New South Wales has an impressive
new initiative on digital identity. We know that this could be incredibly useful for people in New South Wales, but there are resisting trends.

Lauren Perry:
And so we at the HTI are really looking forward to partnering and working with Service New South Wales, in order to make sure that their new offering citizens is as effective, safe and efficient as can be. We're very excited to be working with the James Martin Institute. What it is allowing us to do is to create a deep partnership with Service New South Wales as part of the New South Wales Government. We're really excited to work with the JMI in partnership, through the generous funding as well as the additional services such as communications support, to really share the story and hopefully be able to share some best practice news that comes out of this.

We want New South Wales to be at the cutting edge not just of the technology, but also of the protections that are really the things that will give a firm foundation for Community Trust.

The Human Technology Institute will work with Service New South Wales by doing two things. The first is we want to help them build a
strong governance framework. The HTI proposes working with service New South Wales in order to upskill their workforce with the right skills and training that they need in order to understand the technology and deliver it safely. And so what this project I think, really embodies is that vision, that technology must be designed, developed and overseen in ways that really put people at the centre