Services covered | digital.gov.au

Services covered by the Digital Access Standard

The Digital Access Standard is mandatory and applies to digital services that are: 

owned by non-corporate Commonwealth entities
informational or transactional
authenticated or unauthenticated
new or replacement of existing services that are public facing.

The Digital Access Standard will be introduced and enforced in 2 phases. Refer to the Transition approach section for details about the 2 phases.

Informational services provide users with information, such as reports, fact sheets or videos. They may include:
- government agency websites
- smart answers and virtual assistants
- e-learning
- publications
- multimedia.
Transactional services lead to a change in government-held records, typically involving an exchange of information, money, licences or goods.
Examples of transactional services include:
- submitting a claim
- registering a business
- updating contact details
- lodging a tax return.
Access points are the online entry points or ‘front doors’ where users go to find and interact with government digital services. Access points for digital services typically take the form of:
- informational websites
- web applications accessed from a web browser
- online portals
- mobile apps
- digital wallets.
People and business do not only access government services online. While this standard applies to online access points, agencies should also consider the non-digital access of their services for users to ensure that government services are more accessible and inclusive for all. Non-digital services are out of scope of this standard.

Services not covered by the Digital Access Standard

The Digital Access Standard does not apply to:

state, territory or local government services
personal ministerial websites that contain a minister’s political activities or views on issues not related to their ministerial role
existing public-facing digital services
Australian Public Service (APS) staff-facing services.

State, territory or local government, third parties and APS staff-facing systems may choose to apply the Digital Access Standard to improve access and discoverability of their digital services.

Some services may request an exemption from the Digital Access Standard. See the Exemptions section below.

The DTA acknowledges that some agencies may be unable to meet one or more of the criteria set out by the Digital Access Standard due to a range of circumstances. These circumstances may include, but are not limited to:
- legacy technology barriers that the agency cannot reasonably overcome
- substantial financial burden caused by changing a service to meet criteria.
For services being considered for integration into myGov these circumstances may include, but are not limited to:
- the users of the service cannot access myGov, are ineligible for a myGov account or where it does not make sense for users to have a myGov account
- legislative or regulatory barriers preventing the service from being delivered via myGov
- circumstances where Services Australia has indicated that it is unable to onboard the service onto myGov.
Exemptions may be granted for one or more of the criteria set out by the Digital Access Standard. This will be assessed on a case-by-case basis and must be applied for through the DTA.
Further information can be found in the Digital Experience Policy Exemption Guide.

Digital Access Standard

Services covered by the Digital Access Standard

Services not covered by the Digital Access Standard

Next page: Transition approach

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