As you may have heard, New South Wales rolled out its brand-new digital driver’s licences today. The new system is meant to let civilians like you and I display our required identification details on the screens of our smartphones instead of having to faff about with bits of holographic plastic.
However, said system also requires you to download an app and sign up, and it turns out that the whole technology schemozzle still presents something of a speedbump for the NSW government.
What I’m trying to say is, the whole thing crashed almost as soon as it rolled out, because of course it did. Let us never forget the barbaric requests from government websites that we use Internet Explorer as the default browser when trying to lodge our tax or (heaven forbid) access Centrelink.
Many punters who downloaded the app, eager to fling yet another useless trinket out of their wallet to make space for more Boost Juice loyalty cards, were stymied by messages like “something went wrong”, “please try again later”, and “We’re a little busy.” You think?
https://twitter.com/lukehopewell/status/1188943056470298624
Labor’s shadow minister for Better Public Services, Sophie Cotsis, had some choice words for the app’s functionality – particularly as it’s been in the making for over five years.
How can it be the case that this is so late and still so clearly not ready? Liberal Minister Victor Dominello was right when he said he was worried about stability. The app keeps crashing. I’m not convinced that this is a reliable platform yet. I won’t be getting a digital driver’s licence until we’re all sure the system is stable. You can’t blame anyone that waits.
Can you blame me for getting one just so I can yell at the app for crashing? It’s low-key one of my favourite things to do. Come on, robots! Do better!
