Beyond Digital ID: three data questions worth deliberating

Over weekends and evenings in June, around 120 members of the public – chosen by lottery to mirror the country – have been weighing the digital ID debate towards a shared set of recommendations. This is the People’s Panel on Digital ID, and those who have been in the room describe something rare in public life: people from every background disagreeing with respect and curiosity, rather than performing for an audience.

It is a reminder of what deliberation can do. A panel like this does something a poll never can: it can change hearts and minds. In the Republic of Ireland, a citizens’ assembly took the decades-deadlocked question of abortion and helped move a country: in May 2017 just 23 percent of people backed legal abortion in all circumstances; a year after the assembly reported, the referendum to repeal the constitutional ban passed by two to one. We should be putting this kind of persuasive debate to work on far more than acceptance of digital ID alone.

Because even done well, a digital ID will only take us so far. It leaves untouched the deeper problem: government’s long struggle to share data behind the scenes, which means people still have to tell the same story over and over, to one service after another, when they need help. At its most benign, that is tedious. Worse, a grieving relative finds themselves reporting the death of a loved one again and again. At its most serious, it can cost lives.

Government works hard at this – Somerset’s “Family View”, the “Tell Us Once” service – but such fixes paper over the cracks rather than mend the fault line beneath. What would really make a difference is a reset of the rules that let government share data with itself: not a technical project or new guidance, but a long, honest conversation with the public, one that shifts hearts and minds and could in time change the law. Three questions sit at its heart, and they are exactly the kind a Panel like this could take on.

When should consent be used to share data – and when does it fail people?

Parts of government are already clear: the DWP doesn’t ask your permission to process your data, because consent isn’t freely given when you cannot get a benefit without proving you qualify. But the charities and councils that sit across the table from vulnerable people often still reach for it, unsure of the law. The cost falls on the vulnerable – a parent who withholds consent in order to hide what is happening to their child. The law is moving fast in this direction. Since February, the Data (Use and Access) Act has let services act to safeguard vulnerable people without consent. And the new Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act goes further still: beyond permission to a duty to share information to protect a child’s welfare. Getting that confidence to the frontline is half the task. The other half is a question a Panel could test: how far should that go – the permission share, and the duty to act, to reduce harm not just for children, but for all of us?

How far should we go in joining data up to reach the people who need help most?

The information that would reveal who is struggling – income, benefits, the loss of a job, a child’s school attendance – sits in different corners of the public sector. Some is already being joined up: the National Data Library is linking health-visiting, childcare and school records to reach children before they fall behind. Yet the new Single Unique Identifier for children – which could stop children falling through the cracks – has met fierce objection from parents who do not want the state joining up their child’s information. That reflex is exactly what a Panel can shift. When 100 Londoners spent four days weighing how the NHS should use their records, 97 percent ended up wanting health and care bodies to join up identifiable data to give people better care. Given evidence and time, people come to see this not as the state watching them, but as the state finally able to help – and building that shared understanding is work only deliberation can do.

Who should actually hold our data – and answer for it?

Few of us think of government as a collection of separate entities. Hand your details to the job centre, the council or the DVLA, and you assume you are dealing with one thing: “the government”. The law sees it differently – it treats each part as a separate organisation, so even using what it already holds to help you is treated like handing your details to a stranger, and bridging that gap takes years and no small fortune in plumbing. The bolder alternative is to close it: to hold the data you give government under a single Crown controllership rather than in silos – perhaps just a few core pieces of data used across government, enough to ensure that those who most need services, and only those who need them, get what they are entitled to. It is a conversation we have never properly had in the open, and one that could start with a Panel.

None of this proposes consent-free, control-free or risk-free access to data, and nor should it. Some friction is there for good reason: it keeps government using data in ways people are content with. The aim is not to tear the safeguards out, but to focus them where they belong — on protecting people, not just their data.

These are exactly the questions deliberation can crack: give citizens good evidence and time to think, and they find common ground where the rest of us stay stuck. We should be using panels like the for more – because using what we know to make a real difference to people’s lives is the most fundamental part of public service.