Papua New Guinea Partners With QUT on SevisPass Digital Identity Research

Papua New Guinea’s government has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Queensland University of Technology to support its digital transformation, naming research and development around the SevisPass Digital Identity Ecosystem among the priority areas.

The agreement, signed in Brisbane and witnessed by Prime Minister James Marape, sets a framework for collaboration on innovation, research, knowledge exchange, and building the public sector’s digital workforce. The Queensland University of Technology is a large public university in Brisbane with research strengths in data science and digital systems. SevisPass is Papua New Guinea’s national digital identity system, which the government launched to modernise service delivery and the security sector and has since extended with a mobile wallet app on Google Play. Under the partnership, QUT is to support public-sector innovation, strengthen the digital transformation workforce, and develop research around SevisPass and other initiatives.

Acting Minister for Information and Communications Technology Peter Tsiamalili Jr. stressed that the memorandum is a framework rather than a finished deal, and that each project will require separate agreements and governance. Matters such as procurement, intellectual property, software ownership, cybersecurity, licensing, and funding are to be settled in future agreements. He described data sovereignty, the principle that a nation’s data stays under its own laws and control, as a central pillar, saying all digital solutions must keep ownership of government data with Papua New Guinea while meeting cybersecurity and governance requirements.

The collaboration supports what the government casts as a move from policy to implementation in building a secure, sovereign, and citizen-focused digital government, spanning digital infrastructure, public administration, and service delivery. Papua New Guinea has been assembling that infrastructure in stages, from the SevisPass identity system to a digital government wallet, and the university partnership is meant to add research capacity and skills to the effort.

“Today’s Memorandum of Understanding is not the end of the journey—it is the beginning of a strategic partnership that will move Papua New Guinea from policy to implementation while protecting our national interests,” Tsiamalili said. The signing was also witnessed by Minister for Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology Kinoka Feo.

Sources: PNG Department of Information and Communications Technology

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team