stakeholders

As new digital infrastructure, UCD can only be built if there is rough consensus. The many stakeholders divide into a number of overlapping sub-groups, of which four are important now, and a fifth – the retail banks – will likely become more important as UCD develops. More detail:

• Individuals. Almost everyone seems to like the idea of UCD in principle; the real test will be when we can show demos and invite participation in pilots
• Learning providers. Since UCD can only start in education, there’s a need for a number of learning providers to act as points of reference while we develop the demos and plan the pilots. We have spoken to a fair number, as well as Jisc; their reactions are summarised here
• Wallet providers. UCD requires that individuals have a choice of wallet provider, and the right to port their account from one provider to another. As the project gains momentum, we plan to establish a wallet providers’ working group; more details here.
• In time, we expect that retail banks will become wallet providers, building the necessary functionality into their web-banking apps. More detail here
• Government departments: UCD cannot be built by government, since HMG has no remit to create systems for individual-individual and individual-private-sector relationships. But the proposal is of such scale that it cannot easily be built without at least tacit consent from relevant government departments. We summarize their current positions here.