GOV.UK Verify was an
identity assurance
Identity assurance in the context of federated identity management is the ability for a party to determine, with some level of certainty, that an electronic credential representing an entity (human or a machine) with which it interacts to effect a ...
system developed by the British
Government Digital Service
The Government Digital Service is a unit of the Government of the United Kingdom's Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, tasked with transforming the provision of online public services.
It was formed in April 2011 by David Camero ...
(GDS) which was in operation between May 2016 and April 2023. The system was intended to provide a single trusted
login
In computer security, logging in (or logging on, signing in, or signing on) is the process by which an individual gains access to a computer system or program by identifying and authenticating themselves.
Typically, user credential ...
across all British government digital services, verifying the user's identity in 15 minutes.
It allowed users to choose one of several companies to
verify their identity to a standard level of assurance before accessing 22
central government
A central government is the government that is a controlling power over a unitary state. Another distinct but sovereign political entity is a federal government, which may have distinct powers at various levels of government, authorized or deleg ...
online services.
History
The
Cabinet Office
The Cabinet Office is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for supporting the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prime minister and Cabinet ...
started work on the system in 2011, when it was known as the Identity Assurance Programme (IDAP).
A private
beta
Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...
phase began in February 2014, moving into public beta on 14 October 2014. The system was declared live on 24 May 2016.
In June 2018, it was announced that the responsibility for digital ID policy had moved from GDS to the
Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. Responsibility for development and rollout of GOV.UK Verify remained with GDS.
Certified companies
Third-party companies were responsible for carrying out identity verification within the scheme. The first five companies – known as
identity providers (IdPs) – that signed up to provide the service through a tender issued by the
Department for Work and Pensions
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for welfare spending, welfare, pensions and child maintenance ...
were the
Post Office
A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...
,
Verizon
Verizon Communications Inc. ( ), is an American telecommunications company headquartered in New York City. It is the world's second-largest telecommunications company by revenue and its mobile network is the largest wireless carrier in the ...
,
Experian
Experian plc is a multinational corporation, multinational data broker and consumer credit reporting company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Experian collects and aggregates information on more than 1 billion people and businesses including ...
, Digidentity and Mydex CIC. After a further tender issued by the
Cabinet Office
The Cabinet Office is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for supporting the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prime minister and Cabinet ...
in 2014,
Barclays
Barclays PLC (, occasionally ) is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services ...
,
GB Group,
Morpho
Morpho may refer to:
* ''Morpho'' (genus), a genus of butterflies
* Morpho (VTOL), a Swiss prototype drone
* Morpho (company)
IDEMIA (formerly known as OT-Morpho) is a French multinational technology company headquartered in Courbevoie, Fra ...
and
Royal Mail
Royal Mail Group Limited, trading as Royal Mail, is a British postal service and courier company. It is owned by International Distribution Services. It operates the brands Royal Mail (letters and parcels) and Parcelforce Worldwide (parcels) ...
became certified companies.
While Mydex CIC participated in the original tender process, it did not go on to become a certified GOV.UK identity provider. In 2016, Verizon was temporarily and then permanently removed from the list of certified providers.
In October 2018, GDS announced that five of the seven identity providers – Barclays, Digidentity, Experian, Post Office and
SecureIdentity – had signed contracts for a further 18 months.
Users of Citizensafe from
GB Group and Royal Mail's identity service would be able to continue using their GOV.UK Verify identity for twelve months, but would need to set up a new account through one of the other five companies.
On 24 March 2020, Barclays stopped providing new GOV.UK verify digital identities, and both SecureIdentity and Experian subsequently also pulled out of providing identities for both new and existing customers. This left only two providers: Post Office and Digidentity. The Post Office depended on Digidentity infrastructure to operate as an identity provider.
Level of assurance
GOV.UK Verify certified companies had to verify customers' identities to level 2 as defined by th
Good Practice Guide 45published jointly by
CESG and the Cabinet Office. This level of identity assurance is intended to be sufficient to support a
claim in a civil court.
List of connected services
The following 22 services were connected to GOV.UK Verify :
By October 2022, only five of those services were still using Verify:
Use beyond central government
Local government
GDS worked with
local authorities
Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of governance or public administration within a particular sovereign state.
Local governments typically constitute a subdivision of a higher-level political or administrative unit, such a ...
from 2015 to pilot the use of GOV.UK Verify by local government. Local government services piloted as of July 2017 included applying for
free bus passes and '
blue badge
A disabled parking permit, also known as a disabled badge, disabled placard, handicapped permit, handicapped placard, handicapped tag, and "Blue Badge" in the European Union, is a permit that is displayed upon parking a vehicle. It gives the o ...
' disabled parking permits.
Private sector
From the outset, GDS had intended the use of GOV.UK Verify to be extended to the private sector. While work was underway in 2017, this was still not in place in October 2018 when the GDS head Kevin Cunnington announced that "GOV.UK Verify is now mature enough for us to take it to the next stage – opening it up beyond the public sector for the private sector to take the lead".
Cunnington announced that five of the identity providers had signed contracts for a further 18 months, after which the scheme would not receive further funding from government. The development of the scheme would instead be in the hands of the private sector.
NHS
GOV.UK Verify was one of the options considered by the
National Health Service
The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...
for its citizen identity solution. In November 2018, the NHS announced that it was pursuing its own app-based solution, but was looking for a way to enable people who have a GOV.UK Verify account to use it to log in to NHS systems.
International
Work was underway to enable non-British citizens to access the service from September 2018.
GOV.UK Verify was designed to allow interoperability with the ID schemes of other EU states, as part of the
eIDAS
The eIDAS Regulation (for "electronic IDentification, Authentication and trust Services") is an regulation (European Union), EU regulation with the stated purpose of governing "electronic identification and trust service provider, trust service ...
scheme. On 28 August 2018, GOV.UK Verify took its first step towards enabling British residents to use their GOV.UK Verify account to log on to online public services in other EU countries. The scheme was 'notified' on 2 May 2019.
Criticism
GOV.UK Verify did not meet various targets that GDS set for it:
*The platform was originally due to launch in 2012, but did not do so until 2016.
*The success rate in verifying individuals was 47% as of October 2018.
It does not meet all the identity requirements of government departments, such as identifying intermediaries or businesses.
The
Infrastructure and Projects Authority
The Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) was, between 2016 and April 2025, the United Kingdom government's centre of expertise for infrastructure and major projects. The IPA reported to the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury. The core teams in ...
(IPA) reviewed Verify in July 2018, noting the department's reluctance to continue funding the project, with another report later that year recommending that the identity assurance programme should be terminated.
In October 2018,
Jo Platt
Joanne Marie Platt (born 15 June 1973) is a British Labour and Co-operative politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Leigh and Atherton since 2024. She was previously MP for Leigh from 2017 to 2019.
Political career
Platt w ...
, the
Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, said that £130 million had been spent on developing GOV.UK Verify.
Evolution and closure
In December 2018, GDS announced that over the next 18 months they would be working with standards bodies, identity providers and the private sector to:
* Make the standards easier to follow and use
* Accept more types of identity evidence
* Remove barriers to reuse of digital identities across the public and private sector
* Make better use of government data to help people prove who they are online
* Open up the market based on a standards-based approach
''
Computer Weekly
''Computer Weekly'' is a digital magazine and website for IT professionals in the United Kingdom owned by Informa TechTarget. It was formerly published as a weekly print magazine by Reed Business Information for over 50 years. Topics covered wit ...
'' expressed concern over this approach in August 2019.
In April 2020, funding for GOV.UK Verify was extended by 18 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In August 2020, trade association
TechUK
The United Kingdom has a diverse cyber security community, interconnected in a complex network.
Public sector bodies
Legislative
According to a parliamentary committee the UK government is not doing enough to protect the nation against cyber ...
criticised the Government's progress since 2019 as being slow and opaque.
In April 2021, the platform was extended by a further two years.
HMRC
His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (commonly HM Revenue and Customs, or HMRC, and formerly Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) is a Departments of the United Kingdom Government, department of the UK government responsible for the tax collectio ...
ceased to use Verify, which had been available for a limited number of online services in parallel with
Government Gateway sign-in, with effect from April 2022.
On 28 October 2022, it was announced that Verify would be closed, with no new accounts created from mid-December 2022 and all Verify services closed in April 2023.
The Government Digital Service is developing a replacement service, the One Login For Government.
See also
*
Digital identity
A digital identity is data stored on Computer, computer systems relating to an individual, organization, application, or device. For individuals, it involves the collection of personal data that is essential for facilitating automated access to ...
*
Electronic authentication
Electronic authentication is the process of establishing confidence in user identities electronically presented to an information system. Digital authentication, or e-authentication, may be used synonymously when referring to the authentication pro ...
*
Federated identity
A federated identity in information technology is the means of linking a person's electronic identity and attributes, stored across multiple distinct identity management systems.
Federated identity is related to single sign-on (SSO), in which a ...
*
Government Gateway
*
Identity management
Identity and access management (IAM or IdAM) or Identity management (IdM), is a framework of policies and technologies to ensure that the right users (that are part of the ecosystem connected to or within an enterprise) have the appropriate acce ...
*
National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) is a US government initiative announced in April 2011 to improve the privacy, security and convenience of sensitive online transactions through collaborative efforts with the private ...
(US equivalent initiative)
*
Open Identity Exchange
Further reading
*
References
{{OGL-attribution, {{Cite web, url=https://www.gov.uk/performance/govuk-verify/government-services, title=Dashboard - GOV.UK Verify - GOV.UK, website=www.gov.uk, language=en, access-date=2020-01-05
External links
Introducing GOV.UK VerifyVideo showing how GOV.UK Verify worksGOV.UK Verify on TwitterGOV.UK Verify blogGOV.UK Verify performance dashboardIdentity Assurance Programme briefing paper–
National Audit Office, December 2014
Investigation into Verify– National Audit Office, March 2019
Identity management
Identity management initiative
Federated identity
Identity management systems
Computer access control
E-government in the United Kingdom
Government Digital Service