The Cabinet Office has launched a consultation on a proposal to change the law on data sharing between departments to support the One Login programme for a single sign-on to government services.
It said it is seeking views on an amendment to existing legislation to make it easer to citizens to prove and re-use their identity when accessing services.
This reflects the priorities of the One Login programme, currently under development by the Government Digital Service (GDS), to provide a single sign-on and identity checking solution for public services. It is aimed at enabling citizens to prove their identity online then re-use it for all government services through a single account.
As part of the programme the Cabinet Office is proposing a new regulation under the Digital Economy Act (DEA) to strengthen departments’ ability to share necessary information to support identify verification and re-use.
The consultation document says participating public authorities will need to be able to check and share several types of personal data with the identity verification service for users to prove they are who they say they are.
New objective
It proposes a new objective under the DEA to enable the data sharing by authorities included in Schedule 4 of the act, and to add four new bodies – the Cabinet Office, the Department for Transport, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Disclosure and Barring Service – to the schedule.
Writing in the document’s foreword, Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office Alex Burghart MP says the Government is also legislating to enable the use of trusted digital identities under the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. This is being led by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
He adds: “The proposed data sharing legislation will ensure that more people than ever before will be able to prove their identity online and access government services, so that anybody who wants to use online services is able to. Furthermore, the government is committed to realising the benefits of digital identity technologies without creating ID cards.”
The consultation will be open until 1 March.
