The Identity Verification Service

The Identity Verification Service is an initiative by the New Zealand Government to allow passport level strength authentication of identity online. This is the next step in allowing full access for New Zealand citizens to online government services.

There are various considerations for a service of this type including security, privacy and reliability while also ensuring the delivery of a quiet, out of the media and time-sensitive project.

From a project management perspective, this software development project wasn’t ground breaking from a methodology or process perspective.  Whilst we began with a clear set of principals in place, it was the way in which the project team was able to adapt to each new challenge that made the project special.

The intention of this presentation is to discuss the circumstances of these challenges, and look at the ways in which we dealt with each.  In some cases we might not have necessarily followed the word of the Prince2 manual, but taking a pragmatic approach to problem solving, each issue was successfully tackled head-on.

Bill Moses, Business Manager, Datacom

Bill has been with Datacom for 5 years in various senior management and project roles, latterly as Business Manager. He specialises in process improvement and service delivery as it relates to software development. Bill has a Master’s degree from Victoria University, is PMP, ITIL Foundation Certified and is a JP.  Bill was responsible for delivery of the Identity Verification Service project.

Linda Smith, Director of Projects - Datacom

Linda has also been with Datacom for 5 years and has worked as a project and programme manager for the past 12 years across a wide range of IT projects.  After completing the delivery of the infrastructure stream of the IVS project, Linda recently took on a new management role at Datacom at the beginning of 2010, with one of her objectives being raising the project management maturity at Datacom.  Linda has a Masters degree from Massey, is PMP, Prince 2 MSP and ITIL Foundation certified.