The government has announced it will officially go live next week with gov.uk Verify, the online service taxpayers will need to use to prove their identity before accessing HMRC’s digital services and other government online offerings
The central government platform for online identity assurance, has been under development for some time by the government digital service (GDS) and has been available in a beta version. It has now passed its service assessment.
In a blog entry, Janet Hughes, programme director for Verify at GDS, said the move to live working would not be a ‘dramatic change’ but formed part of an ongoing gradual process of developing and scaling up the service. Gov.uk Verify will actually look exactly the same to users, apart from the removal of the beta label.
According to the Cabinet Office guidance, it takes about 10 minutes for an individual to verify their identity the first time they use gov.uk Verify, and a couple of minutes any time after that.
Individuals choose from a list of companies certified to verify their identity. That company may ask some questions, or perform other checks using photo identification and financial information before confirming this to the government department the individual is trying to use.
There are currently eight companies offering this service: Barclays, CitizenSafe, Digidentiy, Experian, Post Office, Royal Mail, SecureIdentify, and Verizon.
The Cabinet Office has indicated that 10 central government services, which have been using it in beta form, will take gov.uk Verify to live next week. HMRC will be a key player and will be using the verification service for taxpayers who want to check their income tax for the current year; sign in to a personal tax account; sign in and file a self-assessment tax return; check or update company car tax; or help friends or family with their tax.
Anyone who wants to get a state pension statement or apply for Universal Credit via the Department for Work and Pensions online will need to use the Verify assurance, as will those making redundancy claims online with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, or updating rural payment details with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Viewing or sharing driving licence information online with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Service will also call for Verify assurance first.
In her blog, Hughes said over 50 government services are planning to adopt gov.uk Verify, with 20 intending to do so in the next year.
Hughes reported that the assurance service can now work for 90% of working adults in the UK, which is the main user group for most of the services currently using gov.uk Verify at scale. Coverage is lower among very young people, older people and those who are not working, and the GDS has plans to address this.
There is now a new phone contract validation service in live use in gov.uk Verify, meaning people can use their mobile phone contract as identity evidence in gov.uk Verify, in the same way they might use a passport or driving licence.
It is also now possible to verify someone’s identity without either a passport or driving licence, thanks to a new method introduced by one of the certified companies which allows people to use their bank account as proof of identity.
However, Hughes concedes that achieving a 90% success rate for verifications using the service is ‘ambitious’. GDS has more than doubled the success rate for individuals starting the process of verifying their identity since the start of its public beta (the lowest success rate was 30% in October 2014, and the highest was 77% in January 2016). The average this year so far is over 70%.
‘We haven’t reached 90% yet. This is an ambitious aim, especially for a service that’s not designed for 100% of journeys to be completed (for example, if you try to fraudulently verify an identity, you should fail). As no-one’s built anything like gov.uk Verify before, we don’t know if it’s the right target. However, we’ll carry on working towards it and demonstrating ongoing improvement in the coming months - we have lots of work planned that we think will help us make progress,’ she noted.
Since the start of 2016 there has been an average of 9,700 new verified identity accounts created every week, while earlier in May the service saw its 500,000th identity verified.
Matthew Hancock, minister for the Cabinet Office, said: ‘Privacy or cyber security are nothing without reliable verification of identity. So I’m delighted to announce that gov.uk Verify has passed its service assessment and will go live next week.
‘Verify allows secure and straightforward identity checking without the need for an identity database - and underpins the digital transformation of government and I want to thank the Verify team for their innovative, determined and dedicated work.’
Guidance on gov.uk Verify is here
