Piper at the Gates of Dawn
The foundations of the Gatekeeper strategy were laid out in a publication brought out on 6 May 1998 entitled "Gatekeeper--a strategy for public key technology use in Government". The recommendations of this report led to the establishment of the Government Public Key Authority (GPKA), which has now changed its name to the Gatekeeper Policy Advisory Committee (GPAC).
GPAC, according to the National Office of the Information Economy (NOIE), "is a management committee made up of senior representatives from Commonwealth agencies and information technology industry associations". This committee oversees the introduction of public key technology (PKT) into Commonwealth government agencies and also supports these organisations to "take advantage of PKT tools and services".
Perhaps the most important aspect of what GPAC does is to aid in the development of standards for the Government Public Key Infrastructure (GPKI) and accreditation methodologies for companies that plan to offer PKT services to the government. If a service provider receives Gatekeeper accreditation it is then allowed to offer digital certificate and PKT services to any or all Australian Commonwealth government agencies.
The accreditation has been designed to ensure that the service provider's "physical and electronic security" are of an appropriate standard to guarantee "an adequate level of trust to both agencies and users". To reflect the different requirements of certain departments, there are two levels of accreditation--entry level and full.
Entry level accredited service providers will only be able to provide limited services while fully accredited businesses will be able to offer a full range of services. NOIE says that the major difference between the two levels is that full accreditation requires that security measures be upgraded to a "highly protected level".
