UCD can – over time – provide a range of necessary online applications which government needs, but cannot easily provide itself because of the need for such applications to be used not only in the individual to government relationship, but also between individual., and between an individual and a private sector service provder. These applications include:
- sharing proof of identity – from government (or a commercial identity proofing provider) – to other service providers, such as an employer when proving right to work, or a landlord when proving right to rent
- sharing proof age (without any unnecessary further information) when buying alcohol or accessing adult content
- building a portable personal achievement record, and sharing appropriate views when transitioning between learning providers or from education into employment
- enabling an individual to authorise another person, or organisation, to act on their behalf, potentially extending to include power-of-attorney.
The technology required for UCD is now mostly in place, and can be regarded as a variant of recent work on “self-sovereign identity”, led by various standards bodies, and certain software companies.
What UCD contributes are coherent business, funding, and governance models – together with a credible route to scale – required for the implementation of these technologies at scale in the UK.