If you build it, they will leave: experts warn UK gov’t on digital ID approach

The UK Cabinet Office’s consultation on digital identity closed on Tuesday, and individuals and organizations are sharing their responses. The process has coalesced the domestic industry’s growing fears around market fairness and governance.

Digital systems built by governments tend to decline over time because they are not adapted, the way the private sector sustains products by adapting them to markets as they change, says Tony Allen.

Allen, CEO of the Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS), makes his case in a LinkedIn post on “Why Governments Shouldn’t Build Their Own Digital ID Systems.”

But this is precisely what the Starmer government is doing, argues Richard Oliphant in his own LinkedIn post and accompanying briefing paper responding to the consultation.

The balance in the current system, where One Login provides identity verification and access to public services, and the Digital Verification Services (DVS) Trust Framework, is about to disrupted. When the GOV.UK Wallet is launched to host government-issued verifiable credentials like mobile driving licenses (mDLs), it will bring it into competition with DVS providers from the private sector.

“The fundamental question we should ask and which has not been adequately addressed in the consultation paper is this: WHAT would a national digital ID offer the UK public that cannot be matched by a combination of (a) One Login; (b) the GOV UK Wallet and government-issued VCs; and DVS serviced from the 40+ identity providers that have been certified against the DVS Trust Framework,” Oliphant writes.

Combined with statements elsewhere, the consultation paper represents the creation of an uneven playing field with a fledgling market which, if Allen and Oliphant are both correct, is more likely to deliver a sustainable digital identity system in the long run.

The Competition and Markets Authority should step in to take a look as the DVS market, Oliphant concludes.

The UK is only mentioned once in Allen’s latest post, but it clearly expands on points made in his consultation response. The one allusion to the UK raises the specter of GOV.UK Verify; “a failure to sustain momentum in a system that required constant evolution.”

Allen’s response to the consultation focused on the contrast between the relative readiness of the technology and the immaturity of the regulatory system’s governance. OfDIA gets singled out for a concentration of power that he believes undermines the system.

“It is the ethical – not technical – issues that government should be considering,” is how the Association of Digital Verification Professionals (ADVP) puts it.

The ADVP has posted responses to all 54 questions (though a few are pending), taking issue with the assumptions behind and framing of several of them.

The ADVP generally argues for collaboration with industry, a reset of the project’s goals and government communication about its plans. Public services cannot be overhauled with national digital ID alone. And many of the questions the government asks are unrelated or already answered by policy in other areas, particularly the aforementioned DVS Trust Framework, according to the response.

A truly independent OfDIA could play an important role in ensuring transparency around how national digital ID data is used, in the ADVP’s view.

The ADVP also points to non-compliance with Competition and Markets Authority rules.

All of which makes clear that the government can only avoid conflict with the UK’s private sector ecosystem of digital identity providers by reversing course on some of the few details it has provided.

Article Topics

ADVP  |  Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS)  |  digital government  |  digital identity  |  government services  |  Richard Oliphant  |  UK digital ID