The province of Alberta is looking for someone to oversee its MyAlberta Digital ID program. The MyAlberta program debuted in 2015, and gives residents a way to verify their identity in online interactions.
The problem is that MyAlberta service is restricted to select government federal and provincial use cases, including health records, driver’s licenses, and college applications. The Service Alberta department is hoping to expand the program to provide more coverage for the private sector, in a move that would allow people to use their MyAlberta IDs in more situations.
With that in mind, Service Alberta posted a job listing for a new Executive Director of Platforms. Anyone who accepts the position will be expected to manage Alberta’s digital payments and digital notification systems in addition to the digital identity program. They would also be expected to develop content and gather user experience data that can be used to refine the service over time. The Executive Director would be compensated with a six-figure salary, and would need to build a team and scale the program to accomplish those objectives.
While the Service Alberta Minister’s press secretary, Lindsay Milligan, has confirmed that the listing is legitimate, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is (somewhat bizarrely) denying that Alberta has any kind of digital ID program. He described Alberta’s digital ID plans as an “urban legend” in a recent Q&A with his constituents, and claimed not to have any knowledge about the digital ID programs that are already in place.
Having said that, Kenney is not the first politician in Canada to try to distance himself from digital IDs. Former Conservative MP Derek Sloan (now the leader of the right-wing Ontario party) recently circulated a petition in an effort to convince Ontario lawmakers to ban any form of digital ID. In doing so, Sloan tried to invoke fears about China, arguing that the government could revoke digital IDs to prevent people from gaining access to public services.
Ontario is nevertheless one of several provinces that is still moving forward with digital ID projects. Alberta’s ATB Ventures is working with the federal government to create a proof of concept for a National Digital Trust Service, while Saskatchewan is waiting to see how digital IDs play out in other provinces before devoting more money to its own program.
Source: Western Standard
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