nettime's_roving_reporter on Tue, 18 Jan 2000 18:01:11 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> GST forces giant Australian PKI project |
http://www.australianit.com.au/common/story_page/0,2405,221846%255E18%252D01 %252D2000%255E,00.html GST forces giant PKI project By DAN TEBBUTT THE federal Government is poised to unleash the world's largest public key infrastructure project in an effort to cut GST compliance costs. The Australian Taxation Office plans to issue up to 2.1 million businesses with digital certificates that allow secure online dealings with the Tax Office and other government agencies. Online filing of monthly GST returns will be mandatory for any business with an annual turnover in excess of $20 million. Electronic credentials will be issued in conjunction with an 11-digit Australian Business Number (ABN) -- the new identification scheme that will eventually replace corporate tax file numbers and Australian company numbers. Employment and Small Business Minister Peter Reith said the new system would mean a single reference number and a single digital signature for all dealings with Canberra. "This digital signature will mean a business could provide its details or regulatory information online only once for use by a range of agencies, saving time and money," Mr Reith said. All federal agencies would be bound to accept the certificates except where use of them may not be appropriate. State and local regulators would also be encouraged to use the ABN digital signature certificate (ABN-DSC). Initially, certificates would be issued by the ATO, but by the end of the year any vendor approved under the Gatekeeper PKI scheme would be able to provide a valid ABN-DSC conforming to the X.509 3.0 standard. "This is positioning Australia as one of the front runners in electronic commerce, because it will get digital certificates into the hands of so many taxpayer organisations," Baltimore Asia-Pacific chief executive John Palfreyman said. Baltimore has supplied technology and consulting services for the ATO certification authority (CA), and the Anglo-Irish company's Certificates Australia subsidiary is the only issuer to receive Gatekeeper approval to date. Seven other vendors -- KPMG, SecureNet, KNX, Adacel Technologies, KeyPost, New Zealand-based GlobeSmart and the Com Tech-VeriSign joint venture, eSign -- are currently seeking accreditation, as is the ATO's CA operation. Certificates Forum of Australia chairman Stephen Wilson welcomed last week's release of a draft specification for the ABN-DSC plan. "The New Zealand experience shows the compliance costs of a paper-based GST filing system are horrendous -- it kills small business," Mr Wilson said. "The ATO has recognised the need to handle the GST online, and as a matter of security policy it needs digital signatures to do that." He said the project was the world's largest PKI civilian deployment. He welcomed the use of private-sector CAs, pointing out this would ensure the ATO did not incur liability for improper use of ABN-DSCs. An online register should be available by March. Businesses should be able to change ABN details electronically from September and vendors would be encouraged to establish a common certificate revocation list (CRL) to weed out defunct enterprises. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net