Unleashing the UK’s digital identity economy

The UK faces urgent chal­lenges if the ben­e­fits of a secure and effi­cient dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty pro­to­col are not to be squan­dered.

Crit­ics are call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to ensure the right tech­nol­o­gy, process­es and stan­dards are in place to unleash a new, effec­tive and pros­per­ous era of dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty.

West­min­ster has announced plans to “unlock the UK’s dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty econ­o­my”. Pro­pos­als include updates to exist­ing laws to enable dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty to be used as wide­ly as pos­si­ble, along­side a new set of guid­ing prin­ci­ples for pol­i­cy devel­op­ment.

Dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture min­is­ter Matt War­man says the goal is to make it eas­i­er for peo­ple to prove their iden­ti­ty online to enable faster trans­ac­tions. He believes dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty “has the poten­tial to add bil­lions to our econ­o­my”.

This fol­lows a surge of peo­ple turn­ing to dig­i­tal ser­vices dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. Some 2.6 mil­lion peo­ple made an online claim for the Self-Employ­ment Income Sup­port Scheme between its launch in May and Sep­tem­ber 2020. Accord­ing to the Depart­ment for Dig­i­tal, Cul­ture, Media & Sport, 1.4 mil­lion claimants had no pri­or dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty cre­den­tials and need­ed to pass through HM Rev­enue & Cus­toms’ iden­ti­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion ser­vice.

The new frame­work is long over­due. A report from think tank Pol­i­cy Exchange claims the lack of reli­able dig­i­tal ID ser­vices is severe­ly lim­it­ing the UK’s future as a lead­ing dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

Last year, the Cab­i­net Office’s annu­al report said that the government’s cur­rent dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty pro­gramme GOV.UK Ver­i­fy “con­tin­ued to pose notable risks”, as it strug­gled to cope with demand for dig­i­tal ser­vices in the ear­ly stages of lock­down.

“It’s a shame the UK lost so much time on the unsuc­cess­ful Ver­i­fy project. But there’s more ener­gy and appetite now in gov­ern­ment to tack­le dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty than we’ve seen for many years. Let’s hope this moment won’t be wast­ed,” says Jes­si­ca Figueras, a tech­nol­o­gy strate­gist spe­cial­is­ing in gov­ern­ment, pol­i­cy and reg­u­la­tion, and author of the local author­i­ty dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty sur­vey Iden­ti­fy­ing as Cit­i­zens.

Taking a federated approach to identity

So, what can we expect from the roll­out of a dig­i­tal ID scheme in 2021? The gov­ern­ment has already ruled out a phys­i­cal or bio­met­ric ID card scheme, as used in oth­er coun­tries. 

“The debate about dig­i­tal ID has always been polit­i­cal­ly dif­fi­cult in the UK,” says Figueras. There have been long-stand­ing fears about pri­va­cy and pos­si­ble gov­ern­ment over­reach. Remem­ber­ing the strong his­tor­i­cal oppo­si­tion to ID cards, this has trans­lat­ed into a push back against cen­tralised dig­i­tal ID schemes based on a sin­gle cit­i­zen data­base.

“This is why gov­ern­ments over the past decade have con­sis­tent­ly tried to imple­ment a so-called fed­er­at­ed approach to ID, which allows cit­i­zens to be iden­ti­fied with­out rely­ing on a data­base that con­sol­i­dates lots of data about them in one place,” says Figueras. 

Col­in Wal­lis, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Kan­tara Ini­tia­tive, a glob­al non-prof­it asso­ci­a­tion ded­i­cat­ed to improv­ing trust­wor­thy use of iden­ti­ty, agrees the UK won’t be look­ing at just one dig­i­tal ID scheme. 

“If you are not oper­at­ing a sin­gle scheme — as is the case with the com­mon law coun­tries, most notably Aus­tralia, Cana­da, New Zealand, the UK and Unit­ed States — you are not oper­at­ing a sin­gle scheme. Instead, you are oper­at­ing or sup­port­ing the oper­a­tion of sev­er­al schemes by pro­vid­ing the basic require­ment: a secure and pri­vate attribute exchange of author­i­ta­tive gov­ern­ment-held iden­ti­ty-relat­ed data,” he says.

“With the UK, Unit­ed States and New Zealand in a sim­i­lar posi­tion in their approach to leg­is­la­tion at a sim­i­lar time – Aus­tralia and Cana­da are fur­ther advanced – it would be sen­si­ble for the UK and Unit­ed States to align.”

How to combat digital exclusion

There will, of course, be chal­lenges for the gov­ern­ment. For exam­ple, there are issues of dig­i­tal exclu­sion, where peo­ple don’t have the paper cre­den­tials that dig­i­tal ser­vices will be rely­ing on to iden­ti­fy them, such as pass­ports and dri­ving licences.

“Very often these are cit­i­zens who are vul­ner­a­ble in oth­er ways: home­less, elder­ly or have an irreg­u­lar immi­gra­tion sta­tus. Things can go bad­ly wrong for these peo­ple when they’re not able to prove their iden­ti­ty, as we learnt from the Win­drush scan­dal. So it’s even more impor­tant that pub­lic ser­vice providers can offer them an appro­pri­ate ser­vice,” says Figueras.

Else­where, the gov­ern­ment is chal­lenged with main­tain­ing reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight of the dig­i­tal ID land­scape. The fed­er­at­ed path the UK has cho­sen is more com­plex than a high­ly cen­tralised sys­tem seen in coun­tries such as Esto­nia, which has built a trail­blaz­ing dig­i­tal soci­ety. This means the user expe­ri­ence in the UK may be more frag­ment­ed. There may also be depen­den­cies between pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor bod­ies that might not always be clear.

Ulti­mate­ly, the goal for the gov­ern­ment is to offer a dig­i­tal ID ser­vice that sup­ports users across both pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor organ­i­sa­tions, enabling the shar­ing of data with trust­ed third par­ties.

For exam­ple, indus­tries that require for­mal proof of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion for reg­u­la­to­ry pur­pos­es, such as bank­ing, could inte­grate with the dig­i­tal ID ser­vice to fast track such process­es, assum­ing the user has opt­ed to allow their data to be shared in this way.

“It also rep­re­sents a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to give greater own­er­ship of data back to cit­i­zens, let­ting peo­ple track how their iden­ti­ty is used, giv­ing them the abil­i­ty to select who they share data with, in what con­text, along with the pow­er to revoke access,” says Ricky Walk­er, chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer for the pub­lic sec­tor at dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion firm Kain­os.

“This would cre­ate trans­paren­cy and build trust in the sys­tem, help­ing to encour­age high­er opt-in rates and adop­tion.”

The new trust frame­work is sched­uled to roll out in 2021. With more peo­ple set to use online ser­vices post COVID-19, many hope the gov­ern­ment can learn from the past and ensure the right tech­nol­o­gy, process­es and stan­dards are in place to enable a new era of dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty. Only then can it play a role in unlock­ing the UK’s dig­i­tal econ­o­my.