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The Business to Government (B2G) channel is a way to transact with our Online Services from your own business systems. This means you can build your own interface, integrate your own workflows and business systems with the transactional functionality of our services.

Your business may benefit from a B2G channel if you have a high volume of transactions. You will need the capacity to develop your own interface and have the resources to support their functionality into the future.

The B2G channel will not support the initial registration and account creation process. Online Service accounts must be created and maintained via our web interface.

The following Online Services are currently supported by the B2G channel:

  • Debt Agreement Online – for practitioners who submit and view debt agreement forms.
  • National Personal Insolvency Index (NPII) search

The B2G channel is provided via web services over an Internet Secure Socket Layer (SSL) session.

How to register for our B2G channel

AFSA uses the Australian Government Digital Identity System to verify users. Digital Identity is a safe, secure and convenient way to prove who you are online. myGovID is the Australian Government’s Digital Identity app. 

How to establish a business to government connection (B2G) with us 

  1. Complete the Application for Access to AFSA’s B2G Integration Environment and submit to info@afsa.gov.au.
  2. Create your Digital Identity, such as myGovID, you’ll need at least a Standard identity strength.
  3. Link your Digital Identity to a business using Relationship Authorisation Manager (RAM). How you link depends on whether you’re a:
  4. Create a machine credential. You need to be a principal authority or machine credential administrator (as authorised by a principal authority or authorisation administrator) to create a machine credential.
  5. Note: if you use cloud-based SBR-enabled software, you will not need to create a machine credential. Instead, your digital software provider will create the machine credential and install it on their server.
  6. Download the B2G Onboarding Pack for the B2G service you wish to use.
  7. We will send you a dummy/test machine credential and an information sheet, which will include AFSA’s integration/discovery environment URL.
  8. Build your B2G interface to our system.
  9. Test your B2G interface against our B2G Integration environment.
  10. Log in to our Online Services using your Digital Identity. This will automatically create an account for your organisation in our system, using the ABN linked to your Digital Identity. Note: if you already have a username/password registration with us for AAR or BRS, please advise us of your username and ABN.
  11. Complete the Application for Access to AFSA's B2G production environment and submit to info@afsa.gov.au.
  12. We will advise when your Production B2G account has been activated.
  13. Set up a Device user account for your machine credential:
    • Make a B2G call using your machine credential. The call will fail because the machine credential is not yet authorised. However, this will create a Device user account with us based on your machine credential. To ensure subsequent calls are successful, your organisation’s machine credential administrator (the user who logged in at step 8) must log into our online services and grant B2G access permissions to the Device user account
  14. Grant B2G access permissions to the Device user account:
    1. Log into our Online Services as your organisation’s administrator (the user who logged in at step 8 using myGovID). 
    2. b. Select the newly created Device user account listed under your organisation’s account, and grant B2G access permissions to this Device user account
Service Documentation

This section contains documents to support system integration with our Online Services and is typically intended for software application designers.

Readers should be familiar with the following:

Web Service Gateway Guide

The Web Service Gateway Guide (WSGG) describes the generic technical service highlighting differences with SBR and the use of the SDK.

The technical service documentation describes how external software systems must communicate with us. This includes the security requirements, transport protocols, error management and content container. By using the provided SDK, the technical service features will already be implemented.

AFSA Web Service Gateway Guide (afsa.gov.au)

Message Implementation Guides

Message Implementation Guides (MIGs) provide the entry point for detailed information about how to implement specific business services.

The MIG describes the high-level business context of the service, operations that are offered in each business service and the request / response business messages that are part of each operation.

The operations and business messages are described within the MIG but are authoritatively defined by XML schemas - see Development tools below.

The following MIGs describe services that are currently under development. A contract first approach has been taken whereby our implementation will fulfil the contract as defined by the relevant schemas.

We will prioritise implementation of the operations within a MIG based on transaction volume and client demand.

Development tools

The following technical artefacts are designed to support software developers to integrate with our Online Services.

  • The XML schemas define the valid content of the business messages.
  • The information contained in the B2G onboarding pack assists developers in creating valid technical messages that carry the business message.

Currently the XML schemas for the debt agreement service and National Personal Insolvency Index (NPII) search are available for review online and to download. Clients can download a B2G onboarding pack now and will be issued with a test AUSkey and information sheet when applying for access to AFSA’s B2G integration environment.

The schemas below describe services currently under development. A contract first approach has been taken whereby our implementation will fulfil the contract as defined by the relevant schemas.

Efforts will be taken to maintain the stability of the interface currently described and any required changes to schemas will be advertised here. Changes will be versioned as per the approach described in the Web Service Gateway Guide.

AFSA Web Service Gateway Guide

NPII Search

NPII Search XML Schema Definition provided as a ZIP file to download.provided as a ZIP file to download.

NPII schema documentation as HTML web pages to view. See NPII search documents below. 

Support and troubleshooting

B2G support request form

Use this form to report issues or request support for B2G system integration.

B2G support request form

Password troubleshooting

Question: My password is correct and I encounter the following SBR error "a.g.a.a.c.store.ABRKeyStoreImpl - incorrect password given, incrementing bad password count" - what can I do to fix this ?

Answer: Install the unrestricted policy files for your JDK (providing strong encryption algorithms), for example for Sun JDK 7:

  1. Download JCE Unlimited Strength Jurisdiction Policy Files 7 Release Candidate from http://java.sun.com
  2. Backup the current policy files in <JAVA_HOME>/jre/lib/security
  3. Copy the unrestricted policy files to  <JAVA_HOME>/jre/lib/security

See the SDK for more information.