Gap closing between private and public sectors on digital identity

The gap between private and public sector is shrinking when it comes to private sector digital identity initiatives.

That was one of the takeaways from the recent Think Digital Identity for Government event in London.

Greg Stevenson, technical lead, central government, CACI, also works for GDS as the lead developer for One Login. He said a benefit of the private and public sector working together is cross pollination of ideas and practices.

“We work with lots of different places, lots of different departments. We’ve got lots of different ideas. One of the benefits that we kind of see from that would be private into public sector is the multiple different ways that challenges can be solved. There’s a public-private collaboration.”

Stevenson also said that’s it not a one way street – the private sector benefits from its work with the public sector, too.

“I’ve not worked on something quite as big as OneLogin before, so this is a quid pro quo of ‘you get to work on some very interesting things as well working in public sector.’ The reason I went to Home Office in the first place is because of the interesting areas of work. So, there’s kind of the collaboration piece there – private sector benefits, public sector benefits. It’s not the public versus private thing. That’s an old way of working.”

Digital leaders crossing over from the private sector

Cameron Bell, government & public services IAM Lead at Condatis, agreed that there is more of an alignment between the private and public sector today.

As an example, he cited the appointment of Rich Corbridge as Chief Digital Information Officer at DWP and Christine Maxwell as Director Cyber Defence at the MOD – both of whom came from the private sector.

“There’s less of a talent silo,” said Bell. “I think there’s more of exchange of ideas that naturally happens with that. And to use Rich as an example, he’s taking a very user-centric approach, which I think is something which is common across private and public sector.

“I don’t think there’s as much of a definition in terms of the methodologies and the focus as there used to be. And long may that gap lessen. Obviously, there’s more red tape, there is by the nature of it more bureaucracy, but I think the gap is lessening.”

One Login for all life admin?

In terms of the private sector learning from the public sector, Stevenson said he would like to see a similar approach to One Login applied in business, where users aren’t forced to use multiple apps and logins to prove their identity across every company.

He did, however, note the challenges of creating one login for different private services.

“It would be great… [But] we have to take privacy and security as a massive important focus. What we don’t want is this one central shop that could hold lots of information about lots of people. One of my concerns from… a security perspective is the more you the more you hold about people the more of a target things become.”

Bell revealed how Condatis worked on the NHS Digital Staff Passport, which was developed during the Covid pandemic.

“One of the challenges was the ability to move a resource – let’s say a doctor from one NHS Trust to another. Until then, that have been a manual and paper-based process and had a considerable time and cost element. By using elements of decentralised solution, [and] also using the strengths of a federated model, we were able to deliver the benefits of the innovative solution with distributed services and do that in a time of crisis when it is required.

“Again, I think it’s about looking to the partnership diaspora and putting that risk in the right place, understanding the key big suppliers and vendors that you need to be in the mix. But also, that the right SMEs that have that close customer relationship.”

On the future of private-public partnerships, Bell said: “I think we will see consolidation. I think we’re in an innovation phase. There’s a lot of focus on standards and wallets and things of that nature. If we look to history as our guide, then ecosystems will be a big factor in that.”