Millions of users expected as digital identity platform onboards more government services

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is expecting tens of millions of people to sign up to its single identity login service, One Login for Government, as it adds more gov.uk services.

“We’re really expecting some quite significant increases in the volume of users accessing the service over the next year,” said John Holben, deputy director product, Digital Identity Programme at GDS.

“When all of those different government services integrate with One Login, One Login effectively will become the front door to kind of government, at least in a digital sense.”

One million people have created a OneLogin account, with 2.5 million identities issued to date.

Holben was speaking at the Think Identity for Government event in London Tuesday (pictured). He revealed One Login has onboarded 23 government services in the last year.

The Department of Education is the most recent government department to onboard services that enable organisations to sponsor apprenticeships.

DWP will be the next government department to have its services enabled by One Login, by the end of 2023. HMRC will also start onboarding in February 2024, starting with new users that need to access their services.

“We’ve worked with all government departments to put together a very detailed roadmap of what services they want to onboard to One Login between now and the end of the programme life in 2025,” he said.

Holben added that it was critical One Login is highly available and resilient.

“We’re putting a lot of effort into the way that we architect the service and the way that we engineer it, the way that we design and operate the service with security in mind, the way that we release. That’s equally as an important part of our roadmap as the functional delivery that we’re doing in front of some of the bigger government departments onboarding.”

Tackling exclusion

Holben also discussed what GDS is doing about inclusion and making One Login work for as many people as possible.

“We know that people face many different barriers when proving their identity online. They don’t have access to the right photo documentation, they often had low digital skills or confidence and also that can be combined with a low digital footprint in the UK. So, where people don’t have a traditional photo ID, we’re working on other ways for users to prove their identity with different types of evidence. We’re exploring integrations, banking, to enable users to validate their identity through a bank account. And we’re also exploring the use of a number of other types of documents that they can use within the identity proving journey.

“In terms of overcoming kind of low digital skills or confidence, we found that in our user research a lot of people often struggle with the steps that you need to carry out to prove your identity online. They really value the benefit of someone else taking them through the steps and a checking journey. So, we’ve released a service in the Post Office that enables users to go and visit the physical branch and get their identity proven in person.

“We’re also releasing a new service, which is a contact centre, which will enable us to give assisted digital support to our users that are struggling to get through a journey.

“And finally, in terms of overcoming a low digital footprint, we offer knowledge-based questions based on your financial footprint. But we’re working with HMRC and DWP to offer knowledge based verification questions that are based on your either your tax record or your benefits record. Again, we think this will greatly expand the numbers of users through One Login.”

Additionally, for the first time, GDS will be releasing an identity proving route doesn’t require a photo ID later this year.