UK gov’t clarifies benefits from digital ID prioritized above particular form or issuer

The UK government and its domestic digital identity industry attempted to rise above the overheated rhetoric based on assumptions that have made much of the public dialogue a futile exercise in ax-grinding at a meeting on Tuesday.

Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones met with industry groups TechUK, the Association of Digital Verification Professionals (ADVP) and the Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA), along with executives from multiple executives with companies certified against the Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework (DIATF). Jones assured the assembled that the government will listen to the private sector during next year’s consultations and that no final decisions have yet been made about how the UK’s national digital ID system will work.

The Labour government invited speculation and assumptions by announcing the scheme without critical details, confining its messaging largely to the dubious claim that Right to Work checks could be improved sufficiently through a government-issued credential to stop the flow of irregular migration to the UK.

“Darren Jones made something refreshingly clear: the slate is clean,” says the ADVP in a comment to Computer Weekly. “No decisions made. No path locked in. A full consultation will open in the new year – with one simple aim: find what truly works best for the country.”

The government’s interest in demonstrating the value of digital ID with real-world use cases appears to give the industry ecosystem an opportunity “to step up, share boldly, and shape something that genuinely benefits the whole UK,” according to the ADVP.

The government is focused on the outcomes it wants from digital identity, and will consider ways to achieve them in collaboration with the private sector if doing so will make that possible more quickly and at lower cost, ADVP Chair David Crack says. The upcoming consultations will consider this possibility.

Fitting new plans into an evolving ecosystem

A day before meeting with the UK’s digital identity providers, Part 2 of the Data (Use and Access) Act came into force. The change sets the DIATF on statutory footing, though the acronym appears to have been deprecated in favor of DVS for “digital verification services” and “trust framework” in a blog post from OfDIA explaining the changes.

OfDIA intends to publish version 1.0 of the trust framework next year.

The government has also dismissed the £1.8 billion cost figure estimated by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for its digital identity plan, saying that it has not determined enough about the design of the system to base such forecasts on.

Lawmakers representing the government and official opposition compared the digital ID system to a piece of string and a kitchen renovation in a fruitless exchange during a parliamentary committee meeting this week, Public Technology reports.

If the government is not fully committed to mandatory government-issued digital wallets – in other words if they go the way of digital ID age checks for pints at the pub by Christmas – then neither the government nor the OBR can make a reasonable estimate. But the commitments to make digital IDs mandatory and free to all imply a major investment.

That policy layer seems to lie between the outcomes the Starmer government wants for sure, and the delivery plan about which it has made some statements, but is still planning to ask industry and the public.

Independent think tank the Institute for Government identifies six key questions for Starmer’s government to answer about the UK’s digital IDs.

The Institute asks the government to make a better case to people about how it will help them, and not just the government, how it will build safeguards into legislation and how to avoid digital exclusion. It also wonders how the government will build the technology to manage data security risks, how government-issued digital IDs will fit with One Login and Home Office’s eVisas and what the government’s plans will mean for private sector digital identity service providers, who generated £2.1 billion (US$2.8 billion) in revenue in the 2023-2024 fiscal year, according to the figures provided in May by OfDIA’s Digital Identity Sectoral Analysis 2025.

Article Topics

Data (Use and Access) Bill (DUA)  |  digital ID  |  Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework (DIATF)  |  digital verification service (DVS)  |  OfDIA  |  trust framework  |  UK digital ID