UK ID community looks to the future

Are we all ready to absorb the learning and “move on” as a community, after “several decades of hype and disappointment” for the UK Digital Identity world?

That was the perhaps hopeful expectation set by independent analyst David Bicknell (GlobalData) as he welcomed delegates at last Thursday’s Think Digital Identity For Government 2020 in Westminster, sponsored by Accenture.

Against a backdrop of the imminent (April) end of Government support for the UK’s so-far sole official ID framework, GOV.UK Verify – though, as we noted yesterday, ‘the “V” word’ was very much marked by its absence – this latest convening of the UK’s leading ID show for the public sector policymaker, practitioner and commercial helper had no choice but to stop worrying about Verify and start seeing what has to come next.

Ably picking up the baton from this suggestion, Bicknell’s colleague at GlobalData (the former Kable), Rob Anderson, set out in the opening analyst keynote to both advance the message of “moving on,” but also strike notes of caution.

For Anderson, using a slot many delegates look for as a source of both humour and provocation, the Internet’s obsession with cats proved to be a source of inspiration.

Noting that ‘cat’ could be said to stand for ‘communication, authenticity and trust,’ Anderson surfaced what would prove to be a major finding out of the show: how badly we are at communicating the benefits of ID to a sceptical public.

“Trust is a thorny issue, and it’s been a problem for us as far back as national ID cards,” he declared.

“No-one in Government told the media why we were doing it, and the result is we are still stuck with all these multiple ‘unique’ identifiers like passports and NHS numbers – which not everyone even has anyway.”

Reminding the audience, which contained many of the prime decision makers and suppliers of ID solutions both for the UK but also the world, Anderson added that the original reason for doing ID has to remain delivering a better user experience – which can’t happen “unless we fix this”.

Anderson’s useful reminder of the importance of communication and building of trust was immediately very well consolidated by the morning’s official Government keynote, from GDS’s Lisa Barrett.

Though some may have felt Barrett’s speech was light on specific Verify-future detail, it was still a very useful insight into how seriously Whitehall continues to take ID.

“Last year, Verify was used by 5 million users and to support 22 Government services, and there’s never been a security breach with it yet,” she also reminded us.

But ID has to work in the UK in the context of what people will accept, which she reminded us is, well… a country that rejected the idea of an ID card.

“ID is a collection of ‘yeses’ at a certain point in time,” she added, before noting that recent attention in Government around Identity has been shifting toward greater focus on its use to prevent fraud and limit loss in the overall national tax and welfare system.

“Digital Identity will be normal and no longer seen as ‘novel’ in ten years from now,” she predicted.

“The question remains, how quickly we get there,” she added, before putting up a slide that suggested Bicknell’s suggested new route of travel for us all post-Verify was right:

‘Onward.’