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Explore our one-day conference programme filled with inspiring keynote presentations, engaging panel discussions, and plenty of networking opportunities in the company of digital identity leaders from Aotearoa and around the world.
8am – Registration + tea/coffee
9am – Mihi Whakatuwhera
9.10am – Opening and welcome from MC Janelle Riki-Waaka.
9.30am – Ministerial Address
A government perspective on progress, direction, and what comes next for trust infrastructure in Aotearoa. More details to come.
Speaker:
Hon Paul Goldsmith, Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government
9.40am – Opening joint keynote: Sovereign AI, Indigenous Rights and the Architecture of Trust
A keynote conversation — not two talks. As AI concentrates power faster than almost any technology before it, the real question is not simply where data sits, but who controls the relationships, value and flows it creates. Drummond Reed and Dr Karaitiana Taiuru take on a live tension: deep Māori mistrust of digital identity sitting alongside a genuine appetite for sovereign AI, in a system that too often calls it “too hard.”
Together, they ask the harder question: how do we break sovereign AI down so it becomes solvable? Connecting decentralised trust architecture and AI agent identity with Te Tiriti, Māori data sovereignty and tikanga-informed governance, they will explore Aotearoa’s opportunity to build trusted, interoperable and rights-respecting infrastructure — and turn the upside of AI from a risk into one of the most empowering opportunities on the table.
Speakers:
Drummond Reed
Dr Karaitiana Taiuru
10.15am – Fireside Chat: Trust Framework – The Journey
Westpac shares its journey through the Digital Identity Services Trust Framework accreditation process, including key insights, challenges and outcomes along the way. This session will offer a practical look at what accreditation involves, what organisations can learn from the process, and how trust frameworks can support safer, more consistent and more accountable digital identity services.
Speakers:
James Little, Government Digital Delivery Agency (GDDA)
Joe Standen, Westpac New Zealand
10.30am – Keynote: Designed for real life: How everyday moments build the digital ID ecosystem.
Make proving your age easy for a 19-year-old on a Friday night and you’ve got the building blocks right for New Zealand’s emerging digital identity ecosystem. The same trusted digital identity used to buy a round of drinks could also open a mobile account, secure a tenancy, or help someone navigate their financial life. The challenge is making those experiences simple, trusted and relevant enough to become part of everyday life.
Helen Littlewood from Cuscal Paymark will explore what that means for New Zealand, sharing perspectives on consumer adoption, trust, regulation and the practical realities of building a digital identity ecosystem that works in the real world.
Speaker:
Helen Littlewood, Cuscal Paymark
10.50am – Morning tea
11.20pm – Quick Fire Case Study: From pilots to scale: what adoption-ready digital credentials require
Digital credential pilots can prove the technology works, but scaling adoption requires more than successful issuance and verification. This quickfire will outline the practical conditions that separate pilots from scalable adoption: useful credentials, ready verifiers, simple holder journeys, operational trust, support models and success metrics.
Speaker:
Ralf Engbers, MATTR
11.30am – Quick Fire Session: Identity must be proven, not assumed
AI has made deception cheap and accessible, and traditional signals of trust – an inbox, a device, a signature – no longer hold up on their own.
This quickfire looks at what that means for agreements specifically, where a single misattributed identity can compromise compliance, security, or financial outcomes, and how organisations are reinforcing digital processes with stronger identity assurance rather than pulling back from them.
Speaker:
Joel Foster, Lumin
11.40am – Virtual Keynote: Regulating Big Tech and Flipping the Model on Data Ownership
A regulator’s view from the United States on rethinking the regulation of big tech, data ownership and individual rights — and what it signals for jurisdictions building trust frameworks from the ground up. This keynote will explore how governance, accountability and rights-based approaches can help rebalance power in the digital economy.
Speaker:
Christopher Bramwell, Chief Privacy Officer, State of Utah
12.00pm – Case study: Building for nation-scale; delivering at record speed — The MyMzansi Story
How can governments move from fragmented silos to a unified digital front door without the big-bang price tag? Using the recent MyMzansi project as a blueprint, Sigurd Magnusson of Silverstripe shares how South Africa’s single digital service portal was delivered in just 10 weeks — transforming hours of queuing into minutes of mobile interaction.
This session moves beyond the theory of digital transformation to show a real-world framework for delivering immediate, cost-effective and inclusive government services.
Speaker:
Sigurd Magnusson, Silverstripe
12.15pm Lunch
1.15pm – Panel Discussion: Your ID Your Way: A Front Door for New Zealanders
What would it take to give every New Zealander a trusted, portable way to prove who they are and access services on their own terms — across government, banking and everyday life? This session explores the opportunity for a national digital front door that reduces friction, improves access and gives people more control over how they share trusted information.
Moderated by Andy Higgs, Digital Identity New Zealand
Speakers:
Lucy Mansfield, Lumin
Katie Brown, Te Hapori Matihiko
Tony Martindale, SSS Cyber Security Specialists
Gabrielle George, Government Digital Delivery Agency
1.50pm – Panel Discussion: Enabling Better Customer Experiences: Digital Identity in Action
Digital identity has the potential to transform customer experience — moving beyond forms, repeated checks and fragmented journeys towards faster, safer and more intuitive ways for people to access services, prove who they are or what they are eligible for, and share trusted information on their own terms. This panel will explore the new consumer experiences digital identity can enable, from seamless onboarding and reusable credentials to more personalised, privacy-preserving interactions across sectors — and what it will take for these to become trusted, useful and widely adopted.
Moderated by Joel Foster, Lumin.
Panellists:
Justin Soong, Authsignal
Steve Cowper, NEC
Helen Littlewood, Cuscal Paymark
Leni Ayoub
Mike West, Government Digital Delivery Agency
2.15pm – Roundtable Discussions
2.55pm – Afternoon tea
3.25pm – Fireside chat: Scaling Trust in the Employment Ecosystem
Trust is fundamental to employment. Candidates want to stand out and demonstrate they are the right fit, while hirers need to identify and hire the right talent efficiently and confidently. Yet billions of dollars in time and effort are still spent on fragmented, one-off checks at the end of the recruitment process — just as AI-generated CVs, credential fraud and “AI apply” make it harder than ever to know who to trust.
Over the past decade, SEEK Pass has helped shift hiring norms from claimed to verified, and from verification at the end of the recruitment journey to the very beginning. Integrated into SEEK’s employment marketplaces across APAC, SEEK Pass is a verified career passport used by around two-thirds of applicants, representing roughly a quarter of the ANZ workforce and millions of credentials.
In this case study, Xavier will share what it takes to scale digital trust across employment journeys, partners and marketplaces — and where SEEK Pass sees the greatest opportunities ahead.
Speaker:
Xavier Russo, SEEK Pass
3.35pm – Virtual Keynote: Trust Infrastructure for Real-World Ecosystems
Drawing on India’s experience building population-scale digital public infrastructure, Dr Pramod Varma will explore how open, protocol-first approaches can help trusted ecosystems grow without concentrating control in closed platforms.
Grounded in sectors relevant to Aotearoa New Zealand — including tourism, food and transport — this keynote will examine how reusable visitor credentials, decentralised supply chain provenance, and verified driver, vehicle and passenger credentials can make digital trust practical at scale.
It will offer a global perspective on how trusted infrastructure can unlock innovation, competition and growth while putting people — not platforms — at the centre.
Speaker:
Dr Pramod Varma, Chief Architect of Aadhaar and Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and Co-creator of Beckn and Finternet.
4.00pm – Trust Survey Results
Speaker:
Vica Papp, Deputy Chair, Digital Identity New Zealand
4.10pm – Trust Compact: Public Commitments for 2027
A closing commitment moment where organisations identify one concrete interoperability or adoption action to progress after the Hui. Commitments will be recorded and shared post-event, helping turn the day’s discussions into visible momentum for 2027.
Speaker:
Matthew Evetts, GR1T Global and Digital Identity New Zealand
4.40pm – Event summary, thanks and close from MC Janelle Riki-Waaka and Andy Higgs
A wrap-up of key themes, what we heard, and what happens next.
4.50pm – Closing karakia by MC Janelle Riki-Waaka
4.55pm – Networking drinks
Continue the conversations and build relationships across the ecosystem.