The Australian Government's identity verification system, the Document Verification Service, has come under fire for being too expensive, inaccessible and limited in scope.The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement's inquiry into financial crime has received submissions from a number of parties in the financial services industry calling for improvements to the DVS, which provides online checks of the accuracy and validity of information on government documents commonly presented as evidence of identity. It allows user organisations to check the information on identity credentials against the records of issuing agencies.The DVS has been available to government agencies since 2009, and private sector organisations started gaining access in early 2014. By April 2014, 160 private sector applications for access had been approved and a month later the commercial site was launched. By the end of 2014 about 200 companies had applied for access.The access rules were expanded in March this year along with a new price schedule, which cut the set-up charge from A$5000 to $250.Veda said the DVS did not have enough data. It called for state registers to be brought into the DVS so that, for example, birth, death and marriage certificates could be included.Veda also said access should be as wide as possible, with no restrictions. It said such groups as real estate agents would benefit from access. The Australian Bankers Association said the DVS was a step in the right direction in enabling banks and other businesses to access verified identity data but government and industry should work together to create a more all-encompassing "secure digital identity" for Australians.