UK government identifies digital ID scheme as central to improving online public services

In a new government transformation strategy (93-page / 797KB PDF) published on Thursday, the government announced that it wants more government departments to connect services to Verify.

Government Digital Service (GDS) will be tasked with supporting departments on that work and with making sure Verify works "for more people so they can use it easily and safely to access all the digital services they want to use", the government said.

The strategy also outlined the government's plans to link Verify into local authority services and services in the private sector too, including in banking.

"We will work with the private sector so that users can use the same account to prove their identity online for private sector services like opening a bank account without having to go into a branch," the new strategy said. "We will begin pilots in 2017."

The government said it plans to "introduce guidance and standards for APIs for both internal and external services" to help them link in to government data and services, including Verify.

It said: "We will pilot new APIs, publish what we have learnt from what we have done today and publish a roadmap of APIs for data, services, components and platforms. We will openly develop the process by which GDS will co-ordinate and provide assurance of public-facing APIs built across government."

Under the Verify system, individuals using government online services choose a certified ID assurance provider with which to verify their identity. This involves answering security questions and entering a unique code sent to an individuals' mobile number, email address or issued in a call to their fixed-line telephone number. When using government services online thereafter, government bodies are able to rely on the third party verifications of individuals' identities.

In its new strategy, the government said that ID assurance is "one of the most important and challenging aspects of delivering transformed online services". It said Verify "delivers a federated, market-based approach to identity assurance for central government that can be reused in the wider public and private sectors".

The government said it wants to "expand the range of ways people can prove their identity online" and would work with the Open Identity Exchange to "explore the role of secure, trustworthy digital identities and benefit from market innovation in that field". Last year, the government tested whether internet users' "online activity history", including data from social networks, could be used to verify their identity when they use online public services.

"Building on the identity verification that comes with GOV.UK Verify, we will be working with government departments to make sure that government transactions can be completed electronically," the government transformation strategy said. "We will also work across government to determine the best next steps for other forms of identity (such as verification of intermediaries and businesses) and which part of government would be best placed to lead on this."

Further plans to enable better data sharing within government, and to use data to inform decision-making were among the other initiatives outlined in the strategy.

It is also a government priority up to 2020 to exit from "large, single supplier and multi-year IT contracts", according to the strategy.

"Not all old technology is toxic, but we need to have the right commercial models to effectively deliver the next stage of our transformation: shared platforms, components and business capabilities," the government said.