I agree with much of this, but one underplayed trade-off is how linking data across government services reduces individuals' control over their own information. This can create murky trade-offs and unintended consequences.
To give one example: I know of a public sector organisation in the health field that went all-in on 'one person, one record'. Superficially, this made a lot of sense, as it makes contextualisation much easier if you can see every interaction an individual has had with the organisation in a single list.
EXCEPT - that's not really how life works. If you, as a journalist, contact that organisation, then should that professional query really be stored alongside your personal medical data? Similar things apply to other professionals, say a headteacher contacting the service for advice about a pupil. I think most people would have a reasonable expectation of a 'firewall' between personal and professional interactions, but this was not how the system worked. This led to a load of workarounds - inventing people called Mr James O'Malley Query About the PAF, for example - that made the underlying data much worse.
Your example of not having to update multiple Google services illustrates this further. Many people have multiple Google accounts to keep their personal and professional lives separate, and they reasonably expect to update each one separately. But when the government ties all interactions to a single identity, that separation becomes impossible.
"Tell us once" can quickly morph into "tell the entire state at once" - and this isn't necessarily desirable. For example, we offer free tuberculosis treatment to everyone, regardless of whether they are entitled to NHS care, because this is the best way to protect the public. This means that there will be people in the country illegally who are sharing personal information, like their address, with the NHS. If we link that data up with the Home Office, the net effect is to prevent people from accessing treatment for an infectious disease and thereby increasing the risk to the public.
Similarly, you might register a particular, private, phone number for your interactions with services where you need a reasonable expectation of privacy - for example, if you're reporting a safeguarding concern about a member of your family. Disaster might follow if all of your different phone numbers just get thrown into a single identity - or, more likely, services find work arounds and store phone numbers in unexpected places which exacerbate the problem the data sharing tries to solve - because it becomes very difficult for anyone to reliably update all of their data, even with a single service.
So, yes - there are a lot of good ideas in here, and the direction of travel is probably right. But it’s an area that needs careful thought and planning, as these kinds of changes often have unintended consequences—especially for the most vulnerable in society. We need to be open about the fact that ‘convenience’ often comes at the cost of personal control over data. This trade-off might sometimes be justified, but it deserves far more scrutiny than it currently receives.
Really enjoyed this, and found it strangely uplifting and optimistic.
I also think this could be money saving. You briefly mention schools. One simple example; my kids' three childcare settings all use different, clunky, apps to talk to us. Schools are not experts in IT procurement (why should they be), yet they are all expected to be able to procure the right platform to send us emails, book breakfast clubs etc. Could there be a .gov schools component that meant we were all using the same system to communicate with parents, record absences, book out of school clubs etc? Imagine the money savings across local authorities, school trusts etc.
And if this was then plugged into eg the social care system you could also use it to flag safeguarding issues or identify where you need more after school clubs...
Yep, seems like there are tonnes of opportunities there. Though I suppose the trade-off is that you need to balance centralised platforms with local control - eg, could forcing schools to use a national messaging platform prevent others from innovating? I'm inclined to think a national platform would work better, but I'm sure there will be exceptions.
I may well be using a hammer and so thinking everything is a nail, but this looks like somewhere regional government - if it existed - could help. The (say) East of England regional government would have a lot of procurement power, but there would still be some innovation and competition possible with other regions and nations.
This brings to mind Stevey's Google Platforms rant, which was some of the inspiration for some work I did with a London authority many years ago. Instead of just the digital services, we looked at redesigning all of the functions in this platform style (what I called 'stratification' because you quickly find the functional units sit in a series of layers). There are really good reasons to platformise even things like adult social care and housing provision, even if this means putting an API interface on what might remain a human-powered service or decision. Obviously you want humans talking to humans for a lot of stuff. But we realised - with caveats for safeguarding and privacy - that you could dramatically improve local government by sharing data between some surprising departments. E.g. environmental services and adult social care, since issues in the former are sometimes an early warning flag for need from the latter.
Anyway, great piece and really pleased to see this happening.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this piece, the government blueprint and Platformland. I'm crossing my fingers government really does understand the importance of funding platforms and services over the long term to drive progress in building digital infrastructure. The efficiency benefits and improvements in the ease (dare I say even pleasure?) of interactions with government look promising. No mention of PAF in the blueprint though, but maybe the Treasury needs to support a solution for that.
As a non-driver with a UK Passport which expired more than 18 months ago I have run into problems proving my identity to digital services from the UK government and others.
One particularly annoying example is SAMSUNG Pay which is a Mastercard backed by CURVE. It was a really useful card that redirected payments to other services such as debit card; credit card; bank account and so on. It worked fine until I exceeded an annual limit of which I was unaware. No problem, I was told. Just verify your identity. However, there was a problem. The only acceptable forms of identity to CURVE are a Driving Licence or a valid Passport. I have neither. So I am unable to use SAMSUNG Pay. At least the CURVE app informed when payments were declined so that I could move them to other payment methods, usually exactly the same method to which CURVE used to redirect them ...
I have experienced similar problems with accessing government digital services. To access them I need at least one acceptable form of government issued photo identity, usually together with other identifying information such as first name; last name; date of birth; NI number; and so on.
I have raised the issue with my MP, Daniel Zeichner, (Enabling digital identity / Non-Driver ID (Case Ref: ZA160928)). One possible solution would be for a government issued Non-Driver ID as is common in the USA. Unfortunately, we have no such thing. I would be happy to have one and even to pay a modest fee towards it.
I can't use the GOV.UK ID Check mobile app because it requires either a UK photocard Driving Licence or a valid Passport.
A photocard Driving Licence is becoming the de facto form of identity. Without one (or a valid Passport) I often find myself one of the digitally excluded! A war against the non-motorist?
The most recent example was when I was informed by email from HMRC that my tax code had changed. I could check it by logging in using the Government Gateway. However, to prove my identity I needed either a Driving Licence or a valid Passport. It does seem ridiculous that I can't even check my revised tax code without one of them!
Sounds too much like another seductive vision 'designed for people like us'. Try these no-smartphone examples for people who use the PC at the library: (1) Just moved house and lost my password (2) Required to fill in long benefits form online when I don't have an email (3) Required to show evidence of ID and place of residence when no one sends paper statements any more and I don't hold a diving license or a passport... Now imagine you don't have an email either. Or a mobile phone. And you only use cash. There's a significant population 'in the community', already disenfranchised by the demand for photo ID at the polling booth, their shopping (and dentistry) options limited by the refusal to accept cash. What mitigations does this brave new world offer the new untouchables?
A good question. I'm hoping that in many case people with complex needs and lack of digital identity will be supported by the widespread introduction of Universal Basic Services centres such as the ones introduced in both Camden and Barking and Dagenham Councils.
Per my earlier comment and others, there's little hope in hoping for mitigating add-ons for the digitally excluded (which will be as inefficiently duplicative as the service industry that surrounds/supports the benefits 'system', or the alternative fares websites that help to make rail travel sort-of affordable for the un-salaried... I could go on) unless this brave new world is human-centred rather than device-centred. Because human .DNE. device. And we've yet to explore what happens when you lose your "we'll text you a passcode" device, or it's stolen. That's why most of us prefer to be able to talk to a real life person rather than a bot, a person with institutional memory and the authority to clear 'logical' logjams. People are *still* better than bots for dealing with the unanticipated (cf self-driving cars). Not for every transaction, but available as needed, as a core cost, not an annoying overhead.
Excellent piece, thank you. There will still be those on team “I must speak to a human being!”, but hopefully a correct implementation of digital services would enable resources to be freed up for such services, leaving others to recoup time.
I don't think the comparison with DOGE works. One Login is about making it easier for the citizen to engage with the state, and for the state to more effectively use its data. DOGE is, at my most kind, the means to cut bits off the government with little care for the consequences.
That said, One Login would be very useful to me personally. I have so many Government Gateway IDs that I get confused with them - personal, work, charity. I'm currently helping set up a CIC and it would be really, really helpful if I could have just logged in.
Whilst generally quite exciting you're right to point out that an unscrupulous minister "in the name of the children" decides they could use this to lock down parts of the internet they don't like.
This sounds a hell of a lot like MyGov that we have in Australia, you have one login to a portal and then you link any government services you use into that portal, for me I only have the tax office and Medicare linked but if you use other services I’m pretty sure they’re all in there
If you liked this you'll love what the estonian government has achieved over the last 20-30 years. Small in size due to rapid digitilisation, and thus also one of the best tax rates in Europe. This excellent youtube video explains it all better than I could:
Although not under that name, the Digital Centre of Government was originally called for in a manifesto from Tony Blair and William Hague published by the Tony Blair Institute about two years ago and called A New National Purpose. It is not a purely technocratic idea. It is part and parcel of a vision of government where power is radically centralised, as is now happening in the US. So I wonder if you can draw such a clean and reassuring break with Musk. See https://open.substack.com/pub/williamcullernebown/p/blairism-what-is-it-today?r=7eg9s&utm_medium=ios and also the end of the later post Between Russia and America.
Excellent explainer James. I wish I had the time (and energy) to do 10 versions of this for each bit of my excessively long response to the Parliamentary Science and Tech Committee consultation on the new GDS : https://buff.ly/NeDIcDq. I also wish there was a public online forum sponsored by GDS where interested parties could discuss all of this.
I agree with much of this, but one underplayed trade-off is how linking data across government services reduces individuals' control over their own information. This can create murky trade-offs and unintended consequences.
To give one example: I know of a public sector organisation in the health field that went all-in on 'one person, one record'. Superficially, this made a lot of sense, as it makes contextualisation much easier if you can see every interaction an individual has had with the organisation in a single list.
EXCEPT - that's not really how life works. If you, as a journalist, contact that organisation, then should that professional query really be stored alongside your personal medical data? Similar things apply to other professionals, say a headteacher contacting the service for advice about a pupil. I think most people would have a reasonable expectation of a 'firewall' between personal and professional interactions, but this was not how the system worked. This led to a load of workarounds - inventing people called Mr James O'Malley Query About the PAF, for example - that made the underlying data much worse.
Your example of not having to update multiple Google services illustrates this further. Many people have multiple Google accounts to keep their personal and professional lives separate, and they reasonably expect to update each one separately. But when the government ties all interactions to a single identity, that separation becomes impossible.
"Tell us once" can quickly morph into "tell the entire state at once" - and this isn't necessarily desirable. For example, we offer free tuberculosis treatment to everyone, regardless of whether they are entitled to NHS care, because this is the best way to protect the public. This means that there will be people in the country illegally who are sharing personal information, like their address, with the NHS. If we link that data up with the Home Office, the net effect is to prevent people from accessing treatment for an infectious disease and thereby increasing the risk to the public.
Similarly, you might register a particular, private, phone number for your interactions with services where you need a reasonable expectation of privacy - for example, if you're reporting a safeguarding concern about a member of your family. Disaster might follow if all of your different phone numbers just get thrown into a single identity - or, more likely, services find work arounds and store phone numbers in unexpected places which exacerbate the problem the data sharing tries to solve - because it becomes very difficult for anyone to reliably update all of their data, even with a single service.
So, yes - there are a lot of good ideas in here, and the direction of travel is probably right. But it’s an area that needs careful thought and planning, as these kinds of changes often have unintended consequences—especially for the most vulnerable in society. We need to be open about the fact that ‘convenience’ often comes at the cost of personal control over data. This trade-off might sometimes be justified, but it deserves far more scrutiny than it currently receives.
This is such an excellent explainer, and filled various gaps in my knowledge of how we got to here. Thank you James.
Really enjoyed this, and found it strangely uplifting and optimistic.
I also think this could be money saving. You briefly mention schools. One simple example; my kids' three childcare settings all use different, clunky, apps to talk to us. Schools are not experts in IT procurement (why should they be), yet they are all expected to be able to procure the right platform to send us emails, book breakfast clubs etc. Could there be a .gov schools component that meant we were all using the same system to communicate with parents, record absences, book out of school clubs etc? Imagine the money savings across local authorities, school trusts etc.
And if this was then plugged into eg the social care system you could also use it to flag safeguarding issues or identify where you need more after school clubs...
Yep, seems like there are tonnes of opportunities there. Though I suppose the trade-off is that you need to balance centralised platforms with local control - eg, could forcing schools to use a national messaging platform prevent others from innovating? I'm inclined to think a national platform would work better, but I'm sure there will be exceptions.
I may well be using a hammer and so thinking everything is a nail, but this looks like somewhere regional government - if it existed - could help. The (say) East of England regional government would have a lot of procurement power, but there would still be some innovation and competition possible with other regions and nations.
Really fascinating; not an area I knew much about beforehand but one about which I now feel optimistic. Thank you!
This brings to mind Stevey's Google Platforms rant, which was some of the inspiration for some work I did with a London authority many years ago. Instead of just the digital services, we looked at redesigning all of the functions in this platform style (what I called 'stratification' because you quickly find the functional units sit in a series of layers). There are really good reasons to platformise even things like adult social care and housing provision, even if this means putting an API interface on what might remain a human-powered service or decision. Obviously you want humans talking to humans for a lot of stuff. But we realised - with caveats for safeguarding and privacy - that you could dramatically improve local government by sharing data between some surprising departments. E.g. environmental services and adult social care, since issues in the former are sometimes an early warning flag for need from the latter.
Anyway, great piece and really pleased to see this happening.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this piece, the government blueprint and Platformland. I'm crossing my fingers government really does understand the importance of funding platforms and services over the long term to drive progress in building digital infrastructure. The efficiency benefits and improvements in the ease (dare I say even pleasure?) of interactions with government look promising. No mention of PAF in the blueprint though, but maybe the Treasury needs to support a solution for that.
As a non-driver with a UK Passport which expired more than 18 months ago I have run into problems proving my identity to digital services from the UK government and others.
One particularly annoying example is SAMSUNG Pay which is a Mastercard backed by CURVE. It was a really useful card that redirected payments to other services such as debit card; credit card; bank account and so on. It worked fine until I exceeded an annual limit of which I was unaware. No problem, I was told. Just verify your identity. However, there was a problem. The only acceptable forms of identity to CURVE are a Driving Licence or a valid Passport. I have neither. So I am unable to use SAMSUNG Pay. At least the CURVE app informed when payments were declined so that I could move them to other payment methods, usually exactly the same method to which CURVE used to redirect them ...
I have experienced similar problems with accessing government digital services. To access them I need at least one acceptable form of government issued photo identity, usually together with other identifying information such as first name; last name; date of birth; NI number; and so on.
I have raised the issue with my MP, Daniel Zeichner, (Enabling digital identity / Non-Driver ID (Case Ref: ZA160928)). One possible solution would be for a government issued Non-Driver ID as is common in the USA. Unfortunately, we have no such thing. I would be happy to have one and even to pay a modest fee towards it.
I can't use the GOV.UK ID Check mobile app because it requires either a UK photocard Driving Licence or a valid Passport.
A photocard Driving Licence is becoming the de facto form of identity. Without one (or a valid Passport) I often find myself one of the digitally excluded! A war against the non-motorist?
The most recent example was when I was informed by email from HMRC that my tax code had changed. I could check it by logging in using the Government Gateway. However, to prove my identity I needed either a Driving Licence or a valid Passport. It does seem ridiculous that I can't even check my revised tax code without one of them!
All very frustrating!
Sounds too much like another seductive vision 'designed for people like us'. Try these no-smartphone examples for people who use the PC at the library: (1) Just moved house and lost my password (2) Required to fill in long benefits form online when I don't have an email (3) Required to show evidence of ID and place of residence when no one sends paper statements any more and I don't hold a diving license or a passport... Now imagine you don't have an email either. Or a mobile phone. And you only use cash. There's a significant population 'in the community', already disenfranchised by the demand for photo ID at the polling booth, their shopping (and dentistry) options limited by the refusal to accept cash. What mitigations does this brave new world offer the new untouchables?
A good question. I'm hoping that in many case people with complex needs and lack of digital identity will be supported by the widespread introduction of Universal Basic Services centres such as the ones introduced in both Camden and Barking and Dagenham Councils.
Per my earlier comment and others, there's little hope in hoping for mitigating add-ons for the digitally excluded (which will be as inefficiently duplicative as the service industry that surrounds/supports the benefits 'system', or the alternative fares websites that help to make rail travel sort-of affordable for the un-salaried... I could go on) unless this brave new world is human-centred rather than device-centred. Because human .DNE. device. And we've yet to explore what happens when you lose your "we'll text you a passcode" device, or it's stolen. That's why most of us prefer to be able to talk to a real life person rather than a bot, a person with institutional memory and the authority to clear 'logical' logjams. People are *still* better than bots for dealing with the unanticipated (cf self-driving cars). Not for every transaction, but available as needed, as a core cost, not an annoying overhead.
Excellent piece, thank you. There will still be those on team “I must speak to a human being!”, but hopefully a correct implementation of digital services would enable resources to be freed up for such services, leaving others to recoup time.
I don't think the comparison with DOGE works. One Login is about making it easier for the citizen to engage with the state, and for the state to more effectively use its data. DOGE is, at my most kind, the means to cut bits off the government with little care for the consequences.
That said, One Login would be very useful to me personally. I have so many Government Gateway IDs that I get confused with them - personal, work, charity. I'm currently helping set up a CIC and it would be really, really helpful if I could have just logged in.
Whilst generally quite exciting you're right to point out that an unscrupulous minister "in the name of the children" decides they could use this to lock down parts of the internet they don't like.
This sounds a hell of a lot like MyGov that we have in Australia, you have one login to a portal and then you link any government services you use into that portal, for me I only have the tax office and Medicare linked but if you use other services I’m pretty sure they’re all in there
Thanks for doing the legwork on this subject and making a complex issue palatable.
If you liked this you'll love what the estonian government has achieved over the last 20-30 years. Small in size due to rapid digitilisation, and thus also one of the best tax rates in Europe. This excellent youtube video explains it all better than I could:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5krZBe0Dck
We could learn an awful lot from them.
Although not under that name, the Digital Centre of Government was originally called for in a manifesto from Tony Blair and William Hague published by the Tony Blair Institute about two years ago and called A New National Purpose. It is not a purely technocratic idea. It is part and parcel of a vision of government where power is radically centralised, as is now happening in the US. So I wonder if you can draw such a clean and reassuring break with Musk. See https://open.substack.com/pub/williamcullernebown/p/blairism-what-is-it-today?r=7eg9s&utm_medium=ios and also the end of the later post Between Russia and America.
Excellent explainer James. I wish I had the time (and energy) to do 10 versions of this for each bit of my excessively long response to the Parliamentary Science and Tech Committee consultation on the new GDS : https://buff.ly/NeDIcDq. I also wish there was a public online forum sponsored by GDS where interested parties could discuss all of this.