Citizen-centred digital identity: The invisible enabler of a smarter state
Jim Small
We live in a world where our interactions with public services are rapidly shifting from digital first to almost exclusively digital. As entirely offline services are replaced, the ability to access digital services simply and securely has become foundational infrastructure for the global economy. In government, the invisible enabler for this infrastructure is digital identity. But while the building blocks of digital systems are often highly functional and technical, true digital innovation is fundamentally achieved when services are built around people.
Moving beyond the buzzwords: The human reality of digital identity
When discussing digital identity, it is easy to get caught up in the language of technology. We talk about concepts such as authentication, wallets, zero trust, biometric liveness, and orchestration. These are the methods we use to prove who someone is, ensure they can access only the things they need securely, and protect against digital risk.
However, these are ultimately just technical capabilities and are often used as buzzwords. If we keep looking for purely technical solutions to identity challenges, we run the risk of missing the entire point of public service delivery. Government services are not merely technical interactions; they exist to meet profound human needs, often accessed by citizens during times of worry, stress, or difficulty. A person's identity has a broader meaning to them than just a digital login. It also encompasses their beliefs, their likes, and their very definition of themselves.
Reframing identity risk around the citizen
One of the greatest challenges in digital government is that a person’s identity and their needs naturally sit across government boundaries. Yet, identity and access management systems are often designed around departmental silos. When we try to verify if a person is the "right" person, the conversation often centres around institutional risk: what is the risk to the department if it is not them, and who is accountable? When that risk crosses difficult to navigate departmental boundaries, the instinct is often to deploy more technology to solve the problem or to limit the service entirely to mitigate the threat.
Citizen-centred design helps to form a comprehensive shift in this mindset. What happens if we stop thinking about what the department is risking through identity verification, and instead think about who is at risk? We must ask what it means to the individual if their identity cannot be verified easily, if they are sent to yet another place, or if they do not get crucial help right now. Does that change our definition of what is "proportionate"? This is a critical decision where identity technology cannot help us; it comes down to human empathy and judgment.
Principles for designing identity systems around the citizen
To build a smarter state, we must ensure our identity solutions mirror citizens' actual lives, rather than forcing citizens to navigate fragmented government structures. This requires adhering to several core principles:
- See whole humans: We need to break down the barriers across government departments to view and treat citizens as whole humans, rather than isolated data points and credentials scattered across disparate identity systems.
- Balance experience and security: The perennial objective in identity is finding the sweet spot between a seamless user experience and a robust, secure-by-design architecture.
- Embed accessibility and inclusion: Digital identity services must be designed so that all customers and citizens can successfully onboard, transact, self-serve, and consume what they need, regardless of their digital literacy or background.
Realising the promise of digital identity in public services
Implementing these principles is undeniably hard, but it is entirely possible. At Hippo, we have seen this first-hand through our work delivering national-scale identity solutions like GOV.UK One Login and NHS login, and by reusing these learnings to tackle cross-departmental identity challenges in the Department for Education.
Achieving this requires collaborative working and a common understanding across the public sector. We absolutely need robust identity components, ethics, rules, and compliance to deliver baseline functionality and ensure success. Furthermore, we need appropriate legislation to afford people the protections they feel they need around their personal data.
We already have access to advanced tools such as identity platforms, AI, cyber security, and data architectures. But it is not the technology alone that will solve real-world public sector problems; it is how we, as humans, choose to apply it. Solving identity challenges through a genuinely human-centric lens helps us make all services better. True innovation in digital identity doesn't sit in the technology; it sits with the people designing it.
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