The UK Secretary of State, Peter Kyle has unveiled the blueprint for the UK government wallet revealing it will launch in the summer. The government’s vision to launch the wallet, and develop an early credential in the form of a new digital licence, provides the firm foundations for digital public services and businesses designed around the user and efficiency with onboarding.
Building momentum, new technical documentation has been published around the GOV.UK wallet and Natalie Jones, Director of Digital Identity, at the Government Digital Service just a day ago wrote a blog post marking the start of formal engagement with the technology industry.
Working in partnerships with tech vendors will accelerate progress against an ambitious timeline to “build and make usable a digital wallet for the government along with an early set of credentials in a single calendar year”. Much like the European’s initiative for the bloc, the UK is following to create a workable digital ID solution which has generated significant interest but entails the questions of how the GOV.UK wallet will work, “where it could be used, and how we’d make good on the government’s commitment to work with industry”.
The event in Victoria commenced face-to-face interaction between private identity providers and government, unveiling working principles of the wallet to date. Industry expert, Richard Oliphant, stated the highlights of the event confirming that government departments will issue cryptographically verifiable credentials to the wallet beginning with a digital driving licence, which are linked to the user’s GOV.UK One Login account. All government issued credentials should be digitalised by 2027 and based on open standards.
Technology providers are challenged regarding facilitating the use of the wallet in the private sector. They must create an orchestration service that is certified against the DIATF to facilitate data sharing to a relying party, such as a retailer.
Identity services also certified against the DIATF can take information from digital credentials in the wallet, with the user’s consent, to help prove the user’s age, identity or eligibility to the relying party (or create a reusable ‘derived credential’).
Public sector organisations will consume and verify credentials from the wallet.
The digital veterans card in partnership with the Office of Veterans’ Affairs and Ministry of Defence will launch as the first credential in the wallet.
