The Security Industry Authority (SIA) has detailed how it is working with Government Digital Service (GDS) to incorporate the GOV.UK OneLogin platform.
The SIA is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB), sponsored by the Home Office. It acts as a regulator of the private security industry in the UK to tackle crime and improve public safety. Among its responsibilities, The SIA licenses individuals within the private security industry, such as security guards, CCTV operators, door supervisors, and close protection officers.
It efforts to digitise and automate more of its verification processes are set out in a new review by the Home Office.
In terms of its requirements, the SIA’s identity verification process must be efficient, secure, and accessible to a diverse range of users, including those for whom English is not a first language. It must be scalable to cope with increasing application volumes and able to support the variety of identification documents held by the SIA’s international applicants.
OneLogin meets the medium confidence standard set out in the GPG 45 Good Practice Guide for validating the identities of UK applicants, and applicants based overseas with chipped passports.
However, the SIA also refers all applications for a standard criminal record check from the Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS), or as appropriate Disclosure Scotland or Access NI. DBS therefore requires a higher confidence level for these checks than OneLogin’s standard offering.
However, GDS has advised the review that it will be able to provide the SIA with a version of OneLogin that meets the confidence level DBS requires, should funding be available.
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“The SIA’s commitment to stringent checks and high standards is crucial to maintaining the integrity of the licensing and approval process and public confidence,” noted the report.
Reducing reliance on third party identity checks
The review stated that integrating GOV.UK OneLogin and the new digital ID portals into SIA’s STeP and customer support systems will reduce manual data entry and duplicate data handling for applicants. The simplified customer experience is predicted to reduce telephone queries received by SIA customer contact agents about the process.
Most importantly, it said, improving the SIA’s digital ID capability will allow it to reduce the volume of identity checks it currently outsources to third party suppliers. The largest of these contracts currently costs £900,000 per year.
The review also notes that verification of licences in the field can be challenging for SIA inspectors to automate, particularly at venues where Wi-Fi or mobile data is patchy. The SIA is exploring solutions to this which it said should progress at pace, as a less time-consuming process that is not reliant on pen, paper and telephone calls would save time for both the licence holder and inspector.
In response, Heather Baily, chair of the SIA, and Michelle Russell, chief executive of the SIA, said: “The focus of this review was efficiency, and the review confirms the SIA has challenged itself to increase efficiency to contain the cost of its operations.
“We will work with the Home Office and the devolved governments to implement the recommendations of this review.”
