The regulatory implications for both government departments and citizens were up for discussion at the recent Think Digital Identity for Government event.
Reusable digital identities
Cheryl Stevens MBE, digital director, shared channels experience at DWP Digital, said bringing together the Good Practice Guides and the new trust framework will be important for government departments.
“For government, it’s going to be a game changer. But for me in a department I want to be able to know that I can trust an identity. We’re pretty good at reuse at the moment … In order for that reuse to continue though, the Good Practice Guides are going to have to evolve with that. As the demographics change, as technology changes, we will have more opportunities. So whilst the levels of assurance potentially shouldn’t change, how we get to them should broaden out and we should have more choice than ever.”
Future of the regulatory landscape
In terms of evolution of the regulatory landscape, Tom Gadsden, product director digital identity at Experian, said there were three courses of action.
“One is to push on with where we are and see how that evolves and iterate which does seem to be the strategy. The other goes back to, are there greater data sharing opportunities, either through channels like open banking, or simply through making datasets available? Attributes or just openness that means that the ability to comply with those regulations or practice guides is made easier and therefore more people are brought through?
“Or perhaps if you can get it to a given point, is there a way to then bring more risk-based assurance in there? Use some of those soft factors around fraud to say, this may have been a medium profile, but it behaves well. Building trust through monitoring how something behaves more than how it came to you. That’s an interesting piece, probably longer term as to whether you can build trust and engagement through monitoring.”
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Ability to share identity information safely
Elsewhere, Matt Russell, partner at PwC, noted there is an opportunity in the context of open banking to share information.
“To be able to help to help any institutional user piece the jigsaw together without having to capture and ask the customer to keep providing that information because that information does exist across the ecosystem,” he said.
“We have to share that information in a safe way, but in a way that allows each of those users to satisfy their regulatory obligations, without having to provide lots of manual information, which ultimately gets all the organisations into difficulty because we’ve got to store that information safely.
“Thinking about how you start sharing that information is the exciting part of the way some of the technologies could start working together. To not only be more efficient but be more effective, as well in relation to the particular risk to financial crime.”
