Digital

Digital Identity Scotland – Looking ahead to 2020

December 19, 2019 by Digital Identity Scotland No Comments | Category Digital Identity, Digital Public Services, Digital Scotland

In this latest blog we hear an update from Lesley Allen, Strategic Lead, looking back on the past few months and sharing our initial planning as we move into 2020.

Welcome to our final edition for 2019 with all the latest updates on the Digital Identity Scotland Programme.

Since our last blog in September, there have been some exciting developments within the Digital Identity programme and team. Engagement with industry and technology experts, and with the Scottish and UK Public Sector are all fundamental parts of our work. We’ve been busy working alongside a number of collaborative partners. Over the past few months we have been working hard to establish relationships and build collaborative ways of working with a number of partners and stakeholders. In particular, we continue to work with colleagues from Social Security Scotland to understand their citizens needs and business requirements. Our intention remains that the Digital Identity Scotland Service will support the delivery of disability benefits as they roll out over the next few years. This will support individuals accessing services both online and in person. Other key partners include the Improvement Service, where we are exploring options to include the myaccount platform as a critical part of the Digital Identity system in Scotland, and the newly established UK Government Digital Identity Unit where we are working collaboratively on the development of common identity standards and how we maximise the use of the new commercial ‘Trust & Identity Framework’ that UK Government Digital Service (GDS) are progressing.

Following the completion of the proof of concept phase and the evaluation of current Identity providers (IDPs), the programme commissioned an independent review to consider the programme’s direction of travel. One of the findings from that was that the programme should move more quickly towards proposing an ‘attribute based service’ to support identity services. The programme team are now developing an attribute strategy and exploring options to test such an approach. As part of this, we held a joint session with colleagues from the GDS on 13^th November and discussed a range of related matters.

We also held a session on the 22^nd November with a range of senior leaders from influential public sector organisations in Scotland. These were organisations who already hold large amounts of data and regularly need users to prove their identity. The session allowed us to share what an attribute based approach might look like and how it would build on consent, increase awareness to citizens about what information is held by organisations they are interacting with and provide them with increased control of their data.

The programme team also offered information about our planned next steps, a prototype to test the design and technologies that would support an attribute service. The presentation from the session is available here. Overall, feedback from those attending was very positive and this has encouraged the programme team to begin preparations for the steps needed to deliver a prototype to test this further. The programme is expected to have technology partners and identity & attribute experts on site to work with the programme team early in the new year. We are also in the process of refreshing the governance arrangements to ensure we have the most effective governance structure and that key stakeholders are represented to support the next phase of the programme. A newly formed Programme Board is expected to meet in early February 2020. Thereafter we will hold both an Expert Group meeting and National Stakeholder Group meeting to seek input from all.

As we continue to work in the spirit of Open Government, we would be happy to focus any future blogs on areas or subjects that you want to suggest; do please let us know if there’s anything you’d like us to focus on. If you would like to discuss anything related to the programme, please get in touch: digitalidentityscotland@gov.scot

Finally, on behalf of all the Digital Identity Scotland programme team, we would like to thank every organisation and individual who has supported the programme so far. We are extremely grateful for all the professional support and advice we have receive and look forward to continuing this in 2020.

Wishing you all a good Christmas and Happy New Year.

Past blog posts:
• Online Identity Assurance (including our Programme Plan)
• What have we been doing? Come see for yourself
• Come to our Show and Tell
• Welcoming expert and stakeholder input
• Focus on technical
• Approaching the next phase
• Listening to your views
• An open approach
• Pre Alpha
• Working with OIX
• Join us in our proof of concept stage
• Opportunity to attend next National Stakeholder meeting
• Thank you stakeholders
• Collaborating through OIX
• Voices: Ruchir Shah
• See you in 2019
• Introducing Digital Identity Scotland
• Understanding the services’ perspective
• Workshop insight
• User research on the road
• User research on the road, part two
• Learning from our stakeholders
• OIX White Paper

Tags: attributes, digital identity, identity

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