Credit: Dreamstime
A late 19th Century heritage listed house has been converted into a 22 desk ‘commercial regtech sandbox facility’, claimed to be the first of its kind in Australia.
The ID Exchange Innovation Campus opened this morning within Glenwood Park House in Glenwood, the result of a partnership between Australian start-up ID Exchange and UK-based firm digi.me.
The vision for the campus is for app developers building on digi.me – a consumer data exchange platform – in key government, eHealth, finance, retail and social sectors to work from the facility, situated in a 'high-growth precinct' of western Sydney.
As part of the launch, ID Exchange announced a ‘Stay & Play’ competition for 12 app developers to win a seat at the campus for one month. The campus will also be open to local secondary and tertiary STEM students.
“It’s our everyday hackathon site where we can help to kickstart developers and invite commercial, government and educational institutions to collaborate on app concepts with the pure aim to get things done,” said ID Exchange founder and managing director Joanne Cooper.
“This partnership will immediately advance the development of secure, ethical, compliant and society-focused open data solutions as called for by the Productivity Commission's report on Data Availability and Use, as well as the Treasury's views on consumer centric approaches being currently tabled via the Review into Open Banking,” Cooper added.
The government in November revealed that it would legislate a new Consumer Data Right as part of its response to the Productivity Commission inquiry into the availability and use of public and private data by individuals and organisations.
The government said this will allow individuals to access data relating to their banking, energy, phone and Internet usage, potentially making it easier to compare and switch between service providers.
Digi.me and ID Exchange are eyeing opportunity in the data reforms – both help consumers to easily gather their data, gain a view of who has permission to access it and share it on their own terms. Partners in Australia include Bainbridge Associates, HCCU, Recordkeeping Innovation, Mafematica, Mainframe Cloud, SISS Data Services,Vault Systems and Verifier.
“We’ve developed a great ecosystem of partners to advance the cause of data privacy, control and consent in Australia, and our new Innovation Campus will see an acceleration of innovation in this space in the coming months and years,” said Julian Ranger, digi.me founder and executive chairman.
It is expected the campus will expand with the addition of 18 desks by the end of the year.
“I’m thrilled to see the continued growth of innovation hubs in NSW. It’s incredibly important that we unlock more and more opportunities for start-ups to get a foothold in the marketplace,” said NSW Minister for Innovation Matt Kean.
“These innovative companies are carving out the next generation of jobs and businesses for our country, particularly around data management, which is transforming the 21st century economy,” he added.
