Aussies push digitization out to statutory declarations

In Australia, good, old-fashioned paper-based statutory declarations are still legal. But the federal government has made digital stat decs just as legal.

The ramifications are mostly time related. Attorney General Mark Dreyfus issued a statement according to Australian news publisher The Mandarin that until this change, 9 million hours were spent annually shuffling 3.8 million stat decs.

The documents are not sworn statements, but the two have similar roles. The best example might be facilitating a name change, but they can also be used in patent applications, for instance.

Digital statutory declarations are another step closer to the paperless future promised by information technology. It’s also a virtue signal, letting people and other nations know that, for Australia, digitization is intended to go across the government entirely.

In fact, according to The Mandarin, stat decs now can be executed using the country’s single sign-on platform, myGov.

Article Topics

Australia  |  digital government  |  digital identity  |  identity verification  |  myGovID