Minister for Digitising Government Judith Collins. Photo: Nick Monro
The minister in charge of a new government app promises it will be "more secure than almost anything else you could think about".
Minister for Digitising Government Judith Collins has launched the Govt.nz app this week after several years of development.
"It's to enable people, say if there's a life event, a baby's born, go into the app and click on 'we've got a new baby' or something and it will come up with all the things you need to do around registration, services that you might want to be linked to," Collins explained to Morning Report.
"It basically brings a lot of the government services into one place for people to link through to."
The Govt.nz app as seen in the Apple app store. Photo: Supplied
In its current form, the app only included some public services.
"[Wednesday's] launch was the very first iteration of the app, and it's going to be changing and added to as we move on. Every six-to-eight weeks you'll see changes," Collins said.
"The idea is that it will become a one-stop shop for people who want to use it, and that's the other important message: this is not compulsory, this is entirely voluntary. It's for people, like, me who love to have apps and want to do all my work on them."
An anticipated feature to be added to the app next year was digital driver's licences and other identity credentials.
"[To do that] we need to change the law and we have that law change going through ... That's due to go through parliament in completion of the legislation early next year," she said.
"We expect to have that digital driver's licence uploaded third quarter of next year."
Collins said the app would be backed by the government's digital security system and be secure against hackers.
"Well they [can] get access now to people's filing cabinets and everything else. [It's] more secure than almost anything else you could think about because it's backed up by the government's digital security," she said.
"If you were to go and rent a house ... The first thing the real estate agent's going to say is 'where are all your identity documents,' so you end up handing over a copy of your passport, driver's licence, birth certificate, photo-copied and put into someone's filing cabinet."
"You've got no control over that and it's a massive honeypot for someone who is trying to steal identity. This is so much more secure."
Collins also confirmed that the app had no means of tracking users.
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