UK government responds to digital ID ‘misconceptions’ after public consultation
The UK government has published a myth-busing article over its plans to develop digital identify verification for online services after what it said were “several misconceptions” about the programme.
The Cabinet Office produced the fact page after it said that a consultation on draft legislation to support identity verification “appear[ed] to have been significantly influenced by commentaries against implementing compulsory citizen digital identity in principle and data-sharing to support it”.
In a response to the consultation published on 23 May, the government said the proposed legislation was intended to enable more effective online identity verification when accessing government services by allowing checks against a broader range of trusted data held by relevant public bodies. The move will support the government’s One Login digital ID platform.
However, the consultation response said that much of the feedback to the consultation focused on tangential themes around digital ID, and that “many of the responses were driven by anti-digital commentaries without engaging with the specific questions.”
Digital ID developments have been subject to online misinformation that it will lead to government surveillance of citizens, but the UK government said that “the proposed legislation does not allow the government to engage in data sharing for any purposes other than identity verification when accessing government services”.
Read more: UK Cabinet Office seeks feedback on data sharing legislation to develop digital ID
Responses fuelled by ‘anti-digital commentaries’
The government invited views about how an amendment to the UK’s 2017 Digital Economy Act would make safe data-sharing across public sector bodies easier to support the government’s One Login digital ID platform, and the consultation received more than 66,000 responses.
The Cabinet Office stressed it would be “incorrect” to interpret the proposed law change as meaning digital ID would be compulsory. Underscoring the point, it added: “There are no plans to introduce mandatory digital identity.”
Responses also included “comments that identity verification services would mean citizens would not be able to use cash, that they would support a social credit system, that they would lead to an identity card being introduced, or that digital identities are going to be made mandatory for all people”.
As a result, the government fact page addressed “several misconceptions about the proposed legislation which a number of responses to the consultation raised”.
The fact page denied a list of claims picked up in the consultation, including that the One Login system would create mandatory digital ID, a cashless society, a social credit system, and that it would be used in way to monitor citizens and erode their data privacy rights.
The Cabinet Office also rejected the claim that the proposed legislation would lead to “bulk data-sharing” across government without specific purpose, stressing that it would only permit data to move between specified public sector organisations “for the purposes of identity verification [only]”.
The three-year £400m (US$488m) One Login project is currently in beta testing and was tried on target users in August last year. If implemented, it could give citizens access to all online government services with a single useable digital ID account, replacing more than 190 existing sign-in routes and 44 separate accounts.
Last month, the government officially shut down its controversial GOV.UK Verify platform, which the One Login system was designed to replace. The decision came after a long track record of faults with Verify’s registration process, lower than anticipated user numbers, and decisions by key departments to develop their own ID verification systems. All departments expected to begin using the One Login platform by 2025.
Read more: UK government officially shuts down beleaguered Verify ID service
About Jack Aldane
Jack is a British journalist, cartoonist and podcaster. He graduated from Heythrop College London in 2009 with a BA in philosophy, before living and working in China for three years as a freelance reporter. After training in financial journalism at City University from 2013 to 2014, Jack worked at Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters before moving into editing magazines on global trade and development finance. Shortly after editing opinion writing for UnHerd, he joined the independent think tank ResPublica, where he led a media campaign to change the health and safety requirements around asbestos in UK public buildings. As host and producer of The Booking Club podcast – a conversation series featuring prominent authors and commentators at their favourite restaurants – Jack continues to engage today’s most distinguished thinkers on the biggest problems pertaining to ideology and power in the 21st century. He joined Global Government Forum as its Senior Staff Writer and Community Co-ordinator in 2021.
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