AusPost deploys Australia's first online police check

Australia Post is looking at how it can expand a national-first platform for online police checks after successfully deploying the solution for WA Police earlier this year.

Western Australian citizens can now apply online for a national police certificate when required for their job, work placement or volunteer role.

Traditionally, citizens would need to front up to a police station to request the certification document, and then face a potentially weeks-long wait for it to arrive in the mail.

Now, Australia Post says, its end-to-end digital platform means those requesting a police check can have the certification document delivered to their Digital Mailbox account in minutes.

Delivery via physical mail will take a bit longer.

Australia Post partnered with national information sharing agency CrimTrac to develop the system, which uses a combination of custom built and off-the-shelf capabilities.

The platform performs everything from the identification document checking to the payments processing and delivery, and storage within Digital Mailbox for reuse.

It uses APIs to tap into the necessary ID databases and pull out the required information to remove human interaction from the process.

AusPost general manager of sales, enterprise and government solutions Gary Starr told iTnews there were opportunities to expand the platform into other state police forces as well as for working with children checks, which is currently a paper-based process.

"We're talking to everyone about these sorts of digital transactions," he said on the sidelines of the CeBIT conference in Sydney this week.

Australia Post is working to diversify away from its loss-making traditional mail business through services and e-commerce.

Late last year the organisation split its e-commerce operations out from the postal services division into its own "trusted e-commerce solutions" division in an effort to grow its digital services business.

It is also currently lobbying to take over the digital services currently delivered by Centrelink, Medicare, DFAT and state-based agencies like motor registries.