The Scottish Government’s Digital Strategy, published in March 2017, contains the commitment to work with stakeholders, privacy interests and members of the public to develop a robust, secure and trustworthy mechanism by which an individual member of the public can demonstrate their identity online, to access public sector digital services. Later in 2017, a dedicated project team was set up to take forward this work, setting out early an intention to develop a solution that is designed with and for members of the public and that stakeholders can support. The first phase of the work – the ‘discovery’ project – ran from January to May 2018, encompassing service user research and an exploration of the technical options for delivering a common approach to digital identity across public services. The next phase of the work will be an ‘alpha’ proof-of-concept stage, which seeks to create a prototype of the identity assurance solution and test this with citizens who would seek to access public services, running from September 2018 to March 2019.

Find blog posts from the team at http://blogs.gov.scot/digital and on Twitter at @DigitalScots