South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber has demonstrated a smartphone-based digital identity that lets its holder decide which personal details to share when another party requests verification.
Schreiber used his own identity, drawn from the national population register, during the demonstration in Johannesburg. The MyMzansi interface displayed a profile photograph, name and date of birth, alongside a wallet containing a Home Affairs digital ID.
The demonstration showed a QR-based exchange between the identity holder and a verification application. After the verifier requests information, the holder can approve or refuse the request and select the attributes to disclose.
Available attributes included name, surname, date of birth, sex, nationality, identity number, place of birth, photograph and issuing country. The approach allows a verification request to be answered with selected details rather than automatically handing over every field on an identity document.
In one example, an immigration officer requested confirmation of nationality. Schreiber also demonstrated rejecting an illegitimate request. The wallet interface includes provision for additional Home Affairs credentials, including birth and marriage certificates.
The demonstration follows draft regulations for a smartphone-based digital identity system. Those proposals describe an optional digital credential that would coexist with physical Smart ID cards, rather than replace them. Home Affairs opened the draft framework to public comment in May, with a June 6 deadline for submissions on the proposed rules.
The proposed framework covers identity, birth and marriage credentials and includes biometric verification for remote enrollment. It also sets out device binding and cryptographic protections for the credential. The current demonstration showed the holder-facing sharing process, rather than a nationwide public rollout.
Home Affairs has separately been expanding the ways people can obtain physical identity documents. Its broader digital-transformation program includes additional bank-based Smart ID services and plans for Home Affairs @ home, through which more services would be available remotely.
MyMzansi brings the identity credential and verification requests into a single smartphone interface. In the demonstrated workflow, the person presenting the ID remains involved in authorizing the exchange: scanning the code initiates a request, while approval and attribute selection determine what is released to the verifier.
Sources: MyBroadband
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
