Gov.uk Wallet ‘empowering the market,’ says Kyle, in big win for OSPs

After a tense few weeks, the UK government has released the working principles for the Gov.uk Wallet plan that has sparked fears from providers that it could stifle industry innovation.

Details were announced at this week’s key meeting between the UK Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and stakeholders in the biometric identity verification and age assurance industries. In attending the meeting, department secretary Peter Kyle hoped to reassure the industry that “any negative impact on the market in which you operate is certainly not something that we intended to do,” and said, outright, “I apologize for it.”

However, there is a note of “sorry, not sorry” in Kyle’s song. The secretary said the Uk.gov Wallet misunderstanding “was simply a consequence of a government coming in and seeing that we were miles behind where the public expects us to be.”

Those expectations are understandable, given that they were partly set by government, which had been trumpeting the arrival of digital ID for age assurance at UK pubs and bars by Christmastime.

The government has not demonstrated any intention to scale back its plan. Kyle said that “next month we will launch the Gov.uk app. It will be followed by AI- powered chatbot facilities, then a Digital Wallet. Later this year, we will launch the Digital Driving Licence, complete with age verification functions for online and offline activity. This shows what government is capable of doing. It shows our dedication to delivering a better set of services to citizens across the country.”

And where does that leave the private sector? Per a blog on the Government Digital Services website that summarizes the working principles, “the Gov.uk Wallet opens the door to two clear use cases for the private sector to innovate.”

These opportunities are “to create an orchestration service to facilitate data sharing” and for “identity or holder services.”

Orchestration service providers, or OSPs, “orchestrate the data flow between the information in your Gov.uk Wallet, and the retailer trying to check you are eligible to buy an age restricted product or service. This is about providing information from digital credentials stored in the Gov.uk Wallet to the people who need to see them in a secure and reliable way.”

The blog compares OSPs to “how card payment services connect your bank account to retailers and facilitate the information exchange which lets you buy things.”

This suggests a market opportunity for UK OSPs such as OneID and Luciditi that are certified under Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework (DIATF).

“This is absolutely a win for Luciditi,” says Dan Johnson, Luciditi’s chief product officer, in comments sent to Biometric Update. “We’re certified under DIATF as a digital verification service (DVS) and as an orchestration service provider (OSP). The government made it very clear in the meeting yesterday that all interactions between the government wallet and relying parties will be via DVS and OSPs and we’re very excited to fully engage in the public/private partnership.”

Johnson believes the Christmas timeline for digitally-enabled drinking is eminently possible. “The Data (Use and Access) Bill is in the final amendment stages and nearing Royal assent,” he says, “and we understand that the changes to mandatory licensing conditions will follow in short order afterwards. The introduction of this legislation enables the production launch of the digital PASS scheme of which Luciditi is a member, is ready for launch and is not dependent on the government wallet or mobile driving licence.”

“The launch of the digital PASS scheme will be instrumental in realising the Secretary of State’s ambition of being able to buy a pint in a pub using a digital identity by Christmas 2025.”

Robert Kotlarz, founder and director of OneID, agrees that “the private sector is in general agreement that the minister is listening and his personal attendance yesterday was well received.”

That said, Kotlarz notes “there remain concerns he is too close to U.S. big tech and will hand them the keys to UK ID data.”

He says there is a continuing push for proof that the government will open the market for digital ID, driven by a general concern that government is still not doing enough to reframe regulation to enable the use of digital IDs.

“Just as identity services can take information from scans or photos of physical documents as the basis to offer a range of products, they’ll be able to take this information from digital credentials in the Gov.uk Wallet if the user chooses to share them,” he says. “These private sector services can then add value, for instance attaching other information.”

There is also “a general ask for a proper regular technical working group at least once a month, attended by regulators and DSIT to clarify use cases, integration design and drive the changes required to make this market.”

Moreover, the government’s One Login system will need to win back its lapsed trust framework certification.

Overall, the sense is that Kyle’s appearance at this week’s meeting is a good start, but that he must go further to avoid running afoul of the industry his government fostered with the DIATF. The specters of Apple and Google loom, wielding the heft of monopoly. And questions remain about how, exactly, the government and private sector can coexist peacefully and symbiotically.

“We want to be really clear that people expect that interactions with government and public services should match the standards and functionality of those in banking, commerce, and travel,” Kyle told the meeting. “But we cannot deliver this vision alone. We need to partner with the private sector.” He cited economic growth and freedom of choice as key priorities for implementation.

“We intend every government-issued card to be available digitally by 2027,” he said. “But how those cards are used – in supermarkets or other contexts – is for you to innovate.”

“We are empowering the market. Not sidelining it.”

It remains to be seen whether or not the market agrees.

Article Topics

Department for Science Innovation and Technology (DSIT)  |  DIATF certification  |  digital ID  |  digital wallets  |  Gov.UK  |  identity orchestration  |  Luciditi  |  OneID  |  Orchestration Service Provider  |  UK