The UK government plans to mandate an electronic digital identity scheme and credential to all legal residents and employees of the UK to prove immigration and employment eligibility status. The announcement states:

“Your free digital ID will be stored securely on your phone and will help to prove your identity, including age and residency status, simplifying access to government services and a range of uses across the private sector.

“It is expected to be rolled out to all UK citizens and legal residents by the end of this Parliament (foreseen to happen before August 15, 2029).

“It will be free to download and employers will be required to check it as evidence of your right to work in this country. This is to curb the prospect of work for illegal migrants, a significant factor driving small boat crossings.”

While not entirely unexpected and unique, and today currently only mandated for use by employers to vet employee eligibility status, the move is a significant change of course toward government-issued digital identities from a country where ID documents have not been mandatory and where previous attempts to introduce an ID card have largely ended in failure.

Here is Forrester’s assessment of the UK’s announcement.

Benefits:

  • Better efficiency, lower costs. Digital identity documents offer better integrity, are harder to counterfeit, and are usable directly in the online digital universe for verifying identities of consumers, employees, and other user types. Transaction authentication and nonrepudiation become much easier. Digital document verification flows provided by the government simplify and speed up employment eligibility verification, resulting in cost savings for employers.
  • Improved enforcement of work eligibility, employment, and immigration laws. Based on the UK government’s statement above, one of the intended and admitted purposes of digital eID documents is better enforcement of existing immigration and employment eligibility laws. Employers being able and forced to digitally check residents’ employment eligibility before hiring them helps reduce violations (current fines are “£45,000 per worker for a first offence and up to £60,000 per worker for routine violations,” which is still not enough to curb a 31% increase in the government banning directors of companies from hiring foreign workers).
  • UK-wide applicability of a new credential. Some of the current identity documents (e.g., Scottish Eligibility Card) are held by only certain populations in certain geographical areas and are only applicable for certain purposes and uses. A single UK eID could create a universally usable and recognized proof of identity for UK residents — useful also for other processes, including opening bank and utility accounts and applying for government benefits.
  • Fraud management and abuse/misuse reduction. As digital IDs can be revoked much faster than physical documents, real-time document validity checks become a reality. It’s not clear yet whether the proposed ID scheme will include address details. If they do, it will finally put an end to UK residents having to use utility bills as proof of address.

Challenges and concerns:

  • No recent history of mandated ID documents in the UK. While other countries (including Germany, Austria, and France) have traditionally obliged their citizens and legal residents to obtain and carry on their person a physical national identity card or residence permit, the UK has not had such a requirement since 1952. No real broad consultation with employers or citizens took place before this announcement, although the government plans to launch a public consultation later this year, mainly about what data in addition to name, date of birth, residency status, and photo should be contained in the eID.
  • No nondigital, physical alternative. It is unclear how digitally unsavvy, elderly, and other populations unable to use eIDs will be included in the above initiative. Opting out of digital eIDs and using (preexisting) physical documents as an alternative does not seem to be supported under this new proposal.
  • Employee and citizen privacy violation and tracking. While the proposal mentions privacy safeguards for citizens, any digital ID stored on a mobile device wallet allows for easier electronic tracking of citizens’ and residents’ location, movements, and behavior at a much lower cost and broader scale. It also raises questions on the extent and size of government participation and interference with corporations’ operations.
  • Unclear technology foundation. The proposal makes no mention of a decentralized digital (aka self-sovereign) identity — centralized identity schemes are known to protect subjects’ privacy much less than decentralized ones and may suffer from interoperability challenges.
  • Harmonization with UK, EU, and international identity schemes. It is unclear as to how this proposal will align, harmonize, and interoperate with existing, more limited ID initiatives such as OneID, let alone the EU’s mature digital identity initiatives such as qualified electronic signature (QES), eIDAS, and EU Digital Identity Wallet (EUDIW).

In summary, the UK government announcement raises questions about: 1) whether identity schemes with such broad implications should be preceded by referendums (such as the one in Switzerland that barely passed citizens’ authorization for government issued eIDs), and 2) whether benefits will outweigh concerns and challenges.