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by pippy 1702 days ago
The NZ govt did a good job with their version: realme.govt.nz

While proving your identity was easy, they've had trouble achieving the next step of information sharing. Traditionally government departments under law were not able to share information. This has only recently changed and they're struggling to reach the next step.
2 comments
earleybird 1702 days ago
Legislated prohibitions on sharing information are sometimes there for good reason. A good government has checks, balances and circuit breakers. Aggregating data provides a very powerful tool. Architecting solutions with this in mind means I (and others of my ilk) have open discussions with the businesses (inside government) we support regarding what are the necessary and sufficient information and identity requirements in an application or business process. There are cases where it is sufficient to only know that "this is the same actor we were interacting with before and they have x, y and z attributes germane to this interaction"
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beachy 1701 days ago
Realme also suffers from typical government thinking though.

We wanted to add it to our platform as an authentication mechanism. That would be good for individuals, and good for realme, as it would increase adoption.

However this is not allowed because ... Realme is paid for from taxes, so noone in the private sector can use it unless they pay.

This makes some sense, but also obviously it makes no sense for a web site to pay e.g Google for "sign in with Google". Google is obviously more than happy to underwrite the costs, since it means greater adoption of their identities and more power to their platform.

As a result realme is stuck in a public sector prison. It's a shame as some of it has been well executed.

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toomuchtodo 1701 days ago
Cost recovery of a public service is reasonable, even if the base level of service is contributed to with tax revenue. What was the cost quoted versus private/corporate identity providers?
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beachy 1701 days ago
No cost was give, but paying an idp anything > $0 would be difficult to stomach when Google, LinedkIn, Facebook and many others provide the same service for free.
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