Government should turn to fintech for badly needed digital identity system

The UK government recently announced that Deloitte had won a new £9m contract, having previously won a £4.8m deal, for work on One Login, which largely slipped under the radar. One Login, aims to provide a single identity for users of all online government services and this type of digital identity system is badly needed.

Currently, around half of the 370 different services on gov.uk have their own login systems and the government’s previous £175m attempt to unify logins, Verify, saw development halted in 2021, eight years after it started. HMRC recently dropped Verify, forcing many to revert to archaic paper tax returns. 

Delivery of One Login is behind schedule; a minimum viable product version of the One Login system was due to be released for testing by the end of March which hasn’t happened. Apparently, this delay is to make sure the system is up to scratch.  

The government needs to get more creative than just outsourcing these projects to large consulting firms and paying extortionate fees in the process. In my view, it should leverage the UK’s fintech sector which is recognised as one of the most innovative communities in the world but largely ignored by government.

Unlike larger consulting monoliths with thousands of staff covering a myriad of industries, fintechs are small, agile and laser-focused on specific issues and would bite off the government’s hand at the opportunity to work with them.

Many are building or have built the identity verification capabilities the government is attempting to create with One Login and so have the expertise and technology in place. Relying on tech-savvy experts at smaller, agile firms would not only improve the delivery of digital services, it would also save taxpayers millions of pounds.