What is the Australian Government Digital ID System?

The Australian Government Digital ID System — commonly abbreviated AGDIS — is the Australian Government's framework for proving identity online. It lets a person establish their identity once and then use it to sign in to participating government services, rather than re-proving who they are at every counter and portal.

The system pairs an app on the person's device — myID, used to sign in through the system — with identity services that are accredited under rules set by the Digital ID Act 2024. myGov, the government's services site, is one of the services people sign into this way. The idea underneath all of it is familiar: prove identity to a standard once, reuse the result.

The exact architecture and the current list of accredited services are published by the government; this page explains the shape rather than duplicating official registers.

• Prove identity once. A person establishes their identity with an accredited provider — evidence, checks, and an account tied to their device.
• Sign in through the app. When a participating service asks who you are, the app on your device answers, rather than you typing credentials into each portal.
• Accreditation sets the floor. Providers operating in the system meet requirements covering privacy, security, governance and quality, assessed under the Digital ID Act 2024 Accreditation Scheme.
• Participation is governed. Services in the framework accept the standard because the rules, technology and accountability behind it are shared.

Accreditation is a formal status granted to entities that meet the scheme's requirements, and it is the kind of claim that should never be paraphrased loosely. An accredited provider has been assessed; a service that merely follows similar principles has not. The two should never be presented as equivalent — blur that line and the whole concept of accreditation stops meaning anything.

This is why you will see careful wording on this site about what has and has not been granted. Claims of accreditation, government endorsement or partnership are made only when they are factually true; “aligns with the principles of” is as close to the line as honest description goes.

The government system and independent wallets solve different problems, and Australia benefits from having both. AGDIS exists so people can access government services without re-proving identity at every transaction — the relying party is the state, and the trust relationship is established by the accreditation scheme.

An independent wallet serves the rest of the economy: proving facts to services the person chooses — a venue, a platform, an employer, a marketplace — without creating an account someone else controls or an archive someone else can lose. The architectural argument for keeping that layer independent of any single operator is self-sovereign identity versus federated login.

For how the wider Australian landscape fits together — government, documents, finance and the rules that shape them — see digital identity in Australia.

Whether a system is governmental, commercial or open source, the same questions apply:

• What is collected, and kept? Minimisation and retention, stated in specifics rather than adjectives.
• Is participation voluntary? A system people cannot decline is not a system that protects them.
• Can you see and revoke consent? Structured, purposed, auditable grants — see consent as infrastructure.
• Is the method inspectable? Published specifications and reviewable code beat assurances. This service's own claims are checkable at open source.