Spending watchdog says fragmented data and inconsistent standards would constrain any future attempt:
Legacy government systems would have posed a significant barrier to the UK's abandoned national digital ID scheme, according to the country's spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office (NAO) has published a review of the digital identity landscape and the lessons that should inform any future attempt to introduce a government-wide system.
Drawing on its previous work on digital transformation, data, and identity, as well as evidence from international audit bodies, the NAO emphasized that digital identity is not a single product or technology. Instead, it encompasses services, credentials, standards, providers, and governance arrangements across the public and private sectors.
Earlier this year, newly appointed Prime Minister Andy Burnham cancelled the digital ID scheme announced less than a year earlier by his predecessor, Keir Starmer. The government had already reversed its plan to make digital ID compulsory for right-to-work checks amid questions about its cost, funding, and implications for civil liberties.
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: "Despite the government's recent announcement that it will not be going ahead with its digital identity plans, questions about how people can conveniently and securely prove who they are or something about themselves in a digital world remain relevant. Experience from other countries suggests digital identity works best when people find it useful and want to use it in their everyday lives, together with effective security and privacy protections."
The report identified legacy systems as a barrier to introducing digital ID across government because they use "inconsistent data standards and have multiple ways of representing the same person."
"Individuals can appear differently across different systems, making it hard to link data and limiting the ability and effectiveness of joining up data across different services. Unless addressed, these issues would be a practical constraint on what a digital identity could achieve."
Any future government-wide digital identity proposal should clearly define its objectives and delivery model and explain how it would address longstanding constraints involving legacy systems and fragmented data, the report said.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Saturday September 05, @10:30AM (1 child)
We have managed perfectly well without it up to now.
The government needs to stop asking if we want a technology that allows random criminals to
dox us all, at huge expense, most of it going to Larry Ellison, and start thinking of ways
the government can save money by not doing things the public doesnt want.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 05, @04:30PM
Maybe the government doesn't serve the public. Maybe they're serving the interests of the people selling digital ID hardware and software. It's a financial thing. As always, ask who benefits.
(Score: 5, Informative) by pTamok on Saturday September 05, @08:35PM (1 child)
The incompatibilities between the different UK government systems that process identifying data are deliberate. Perhaps this has been forgotten.
The example of how the German government operated during the Second World War demonstrated to the British that a central authority processing identity information was a very bad idea. When the German invaded the Netherlands, they took control of the government records that conveniently recorded the religion of each inhabitant. The Dutch resistance tried to destroy the records, with limited success.
During the Second World War, British civilians were issued with identity papers. National Registration Act 1939 [wikipedia.org]. The act expired in 1952, as it was intended as an emergency temporary measure. People resented being forced to carry identity documents, regarding demands by officials to see them as 'un-British', and stereotypically German "Papers please!".
As a result of seeing what happened in the Netherlands, and elsewhere, the underlying principle of British government services was to collect and process the minimum amount of information needed to deliver the service so that, for example, knowing someone's National Health reference number did not give you a reference into their tax records, or their driving licence - those would be a different reference numbers, and no 'central authority' would hold a collected list of all the reference numbers pertaining to an individual.
The principles appear to have been forgotten. The thing about a central register providing a key into all the information held pertaining to an individual is that you have to trust not only the current government that it will process and store the data in uncontroversial ways, but that you are trusting all future governments to do the same. That's 'brave'.
Centralisation can lead to efficiency. The argument of efficiency is often used to promote the idea. Sometimes, you want maximal friction to prevent possible misuse. The lesson will be relearned with the shedding of innocents' blood, again.
(Score: 2) by Bentonite on Sunday September 06, @07:29AM
When it comes to any large register pertaining to information about many individuals, it's not a question whether future government will abuse the data - such large register existing means that it will be abused by the current and all future governments and also anyone else who can get access to the data.
The focus should be to work out how to collect less information, with the end goal being to collect none at all.
Unfortunately, the lesson has not been learned, as governments haven't been overthrown and replaced with something that actually serves the people.