The United Kingdom closed its national digital identity programme in July 2026, and the work around it carried on. On 21 October, the government laid a draft code of practice before Parliament on sharing public data with registered private verification services. Two days earlier, MPs on the Public Accounts Committee asked the department that now owns the policy what digital identity means and how it differs from One Login, the government’s single sign-in service. The pieces are moving, and the plan that joins them has not been published.
This is a pre-mortem: a check, before the outcome is known, on where a programme is most likely to fail. It asks five fixed questions, uses only public documents and takes no view on whether the country should have a national digital ID. It judges the plan on the page, not the people behind it.
The Bet
The bet is that a digital identity capability can be assembled from parts the state already runs. Natalie Jones, the senior responsible owner for One Login, told the committee it serves 264 of an estimated 500 government services. Christine Bellamy, interim director general for digital products at the Government Digital Service, said it replaces about 44 different ways of logging in and that a government wallet is moving from the veteran card to the digital driving licence. In October the Government Digital Service opened a wallet sandbox where certified providers can test licence checks. Bellamy said the strategy for credentials was still being worked through.
The Assumption
The plan assumes the pieces will join up without a single owner. The National Audit Office, the public spending watchdog, says in its September report that delivery depends on clear decisions on funding, ownership and accountability. At the hearing, the committee’s chair summarised the report as finding responsibility spread across more than a dozen organisations, with no coherent strategy for how they work together. The Institute for Government, a think tank, made a similar point about the cancelled scheme, which sat between three departments with no clear owner for the running cost of the technology. Bellamy said the pillar that would let government see an individual as one person across services does not yet exist.
The Sequence
The scheme was unveiled in September 2025, made voluntary in January, and reported on 20 July by the technology publication Computing to be abandoned by the incoming Prime Minister. Susannah Storey, the permanent secretary of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, told the committee that the policy arrived with the machinery-of-government changes announced at the end of July, and that the national programme is closed. The department had held the policy for under three months when asked to define it. The memorandum to the draft code says the government intends to commence the information gateway once the code is published.
The Pager
Each component has a named owner. Jones owns One Login. Rod Latham, the department’s director for cyber and digital identity, oversees the Office for Digital Identities and Attributes, which publishes the trust framework. The junior minister Stephanie Peacock and John Peart, the office’s deputy director, put their names to the memorandum for the draft code. The materials reviewed name no single owner for digital identity as a whole. For the gateway itself, the first person to meet a failure will be an official in a public authority deciding whether to share. Under the memorandum, the code is guidance and authorities must have regard to it.
Denmark found the cost of that arrangement in October, when a private firm’s lawful access to the national population register was used for more than 14 million lookups and the abuse surfaced through the firm’s invoice.
The Proof
Eighteen months after the gateway commences, the test is whether people can prove who they are across services. One Login is the one component with published numbers. Jones told the committee it has an approved business case and had realised 752 million pounds in net benefits to August 2026. Beyond One Login, the materials reviewed publish no cost, no adoption target and no inclusion target. The permanent secretary said there is no timetable for a strategy; Bellamy undertook to bring timelines back to the committee and said detailed inclusion plans could be shared later. Bellamy said about 9% of people hold neither a driving licence nor a passport. The code has no statutory review clause.
Verdict
If the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport publishes a digital identity strategy, as its permanent secretary told the committee it would if it has one, then it should name one accountable owner for digital identity as a whole, set adoption and inclusion measures with dates, and publish the cost alongside them. If the gateway commences before that strategy appears, then the next annual report should say how many information requests were made, how many were refused, and what went wrong. Components with owners can still lack a plan with one. A plan that states its measures in advance can be held to them, and can claim credit when it meets them.
