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General area |
The UK Government yesterday released its response to the Digital Identity: Call for Evidence:
Principles
First of all, it’s good to see that the proposed next steps will be discharged under a set of key principles: Privacy, Transparency, Inclusivity, Interoperability, Proportionality, and Good Governance. These principles are user focussed and align well with OIX’s own user centric principles of Confidence, Choice, Convenience and Control. The governments new principles are also well supported through the OIX Guides to Trust Frameworks.
Interoperability is a key tenet of OIX’s objectives. We will continue our work with the UK Government and the various emerging UK private sector digital identity trust scheme initiatives to help ensure digital identities can be seamlessly used across many use cases.
OIX is already running an inclusion steering group with the support of several key government departments. This group is run in collaboration with techUK. The group is undertaking a segmentation analysis to identify who is likely to be excluded. We will then determine what data set accesses and other techniques (such as vouching) are needed to ensure inclusion so that all users can leverage a digital identity.
Next Steps
The consultation response lays out next steps for adoption of Digital Identity in the UK under 4 broad headings, all of which OIX is already working to progress:
Driving Forward Legislation. OIX provided input into the implementation of rules for digital identity for anti-money laundering checks referred to in the response. Over the course of the next quarter OIX will undertake a Digital Identity Market Analysis, which will include the identification of regulations that may need to be addressed to enable digital identity to be accepted for different use cases.
Digital Identity in Government. OIX continues to provide member feedback on the new government guidelines and IAX trust scheme for public sector. The updated good practise guides referred to in the consultation response were heavily influenced by OIX feedback.
Unlocking government identity attributes. The Inclusion Steering group will help identify the priority data sets to unlock to ensure a maximum number of users can get a digital identity.
Achieving International Interoperability. OIX’s new Guide to Trust Frameworks enables those creating trust schemes to do so in a way that means the digital identities within them should more easily interoperate. We are now working on an Interoperability assessment methodology to allow different trust frameworks to be compared. OIX is also working with various international organizations such as the World Economic Forum, International Institute of Finance and ID2020 to promote digital identity interoperability across the globe.
Governance
The analysis section of the consultation response talks about ‘Establishing Rules’ and ‘Accountability’. The OIX Trust Framework approach is all about the ‘rules of the road’ for digital identity. We help establish these rules through collaboration.
OIX recommends a public-private partnership approach to the establishment and governance of any rules and standards for digital identity. OIX will therefore continue to work with government and private sector members to play a key role in ensuring public-private dialog leading to appropriate joint governance in the digital identity space. In particular we will collaborate around the definition of any legislation for consumer protection relating the use of digital identity, and equally around the rules to be implemented for those providing identity services, many of whom are OIX members already.
In Summary
Overall the principles and next steps detailed in the consultation response are welcomed by OIX and we look forward to continuing to work with the UK government to drive forward the adoption of digital identity in the UK
