Peter Wilson, ATO senior assistant commissioner, said the department was in the preliminary stage of adding a new interface to the Australian Business Register, taking an important step toward providing Australian businesses with a standard and simple way to conduct online transactions securely.
The ATO developed the new interface, the Common-Use Signing Interface (CSI), to make it easier for businesses to use digital certificates to sign Internet transactions. The interface will also be provided to Australian businesses for free as a plug-in and allow them to use ATO- issued digital certificates to sign online documents and forms.
The ATO's efforts will dovetail with those of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, which is handling the initiative's second phase. In March 2003, DEWR will release the government Certificate Validation Service (CVS) which allow the CSI to accept certificates issued by a much broader range of organisations including banks.
"It's breaking the mould of saying you have to have a special certificate for a special purpose application," said Wilson. "It's moving down the path to [a] generic common framework".
According to Wilson the aim of the BAF is to drive up-take of digital certificate usage by making it cheap and easy for businesses to use. He said that the implementation of the CSI will reduce the number of authentication tasks that businesses need to conduct to secure transaction down from 12 to two.
He said that take-up of digital certificates had been slow as the process was proving too hard for businesses and agencies to develop and use. And that, he said, was slowing the progress of e-commerce as businesses believed they were too exposed to fraud and transaction "repudiation" problems.
"If we can get people now able to trade across the Internet with serious commercial transactions that are of low risk and high integrity and with contracts being able to be enforced then we'll start doing things that are serious," said Wilson.
Banks have agreed to co-operate with the government initiative by providing certificates that are accredited under the Gatekeeper program.
To achieve Gatekeeper accrediation program issuers' certificates must meet the BAF Australian Business Number Digital Signing Certificates (ABN-DSC) profile.
A business can use a certificate issued by an accredited bank or commercial agent to sign transactions with government departments.
Wilson said the certificate standard is about taking small steps to reach a critical mass of usage till it offers a compelling value proposition.
The ultimate aim of BAF is for a business to acquire a certificate from one agent and be able to use it in all others.
Its success he said depends on cooperation by government departments in taking up the CSV.
"The Australian Business Register is, potentially, used by every Australian business. Now there is functionality being put in that where they can go and get a commercially available certificate and use it to do business with government," he said.
