Government plans to introduce digital IDs are a prime candidate to be given a second chance at the King’s Speech on Wednesday after backlash last year forced the government to back off its plans.
The legislative agenda due to come in a royal speech on Wednesday sets out new laws planned by parliament. It is expected to show how a voluntary digital ID scheme would be implemented.
But concerns have been raised by experts that the decision could be rushed. A government consultation on digital ID rollout out only closed last week, and the People’s Panel on Digital IDs is still in progress until June 21.
It also comes at a time of political instability as Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces pressure to resign.
Karoliina Ainge, the former head of Estonia’s cyber security policy, said it was still possible to build the public’s trust in digital ID programmes.
Mr Starmer needed to re-assure the public that digital IDs were a “boring” public utility, and avoid linking it to “politically sensational topics”, she said.
“The way to securing any government digital service is around transparency as much as possible. It should be open source. It should be very clear what you are building. That is the only way to build trust,” she told The National.
When he first announced the package last year, Mr Starmer said digital IDs were needed to tackle illegal working. But backlash from opposition parties including Reform forced him to row back, saying it would not be compulsory for those not seeking employment.
But that approach was flawed, Ms Ainge said. “Connecting it to the sensational headlines around people in small boats, that's an insane way to launch something that should be a mundane and boring topic,” she said.
“It has to be done with that sort of transparency and the boringness that the technology actually deserves,” she said.
UK still sceptical of new technologies
Attempts to renew the debate on digital IDs comes as the British public is split about the future impact of AI in the next 10 years, with the 35 per cent feeling optimistic and 37 pessimistic, according to a new survey by Teneo.
Safety from unpredictable arms development (24 per cent) and from fraud or abuse (22 percent) were the biggest sources of concern followed by the economic impact on middle income jobs (15 per cent).
Elisabeth Field, Teneo’s UK Head of Strategy and Campaigning said that the public needed clearer evidence of the long term benefits of AI. “Optimism about technology remains, but is increasingly dependent on clearer proof of value, greater transparency on risk and stronger signals of accountability,” she said.
Ms Ainge said Britons could be persuaded of the benefits of digital ID if they are given the chance to participate in the programme to build it.
“If you don't build it through sort of an honest discussion with the population, it's never going to be trusted no matter what it is,” she said.
The programme’s design also needed cross-party approval so that future governments don’t try to dismantle it.
Lessons from Estonia
The success of the Estonian model, which launched in 2002, was because it “belonged to the state rather than to a Prime Minister” Ms Ainge said, as she urged the UK government to work across parties to get support for the programme.
The Estonian government made its digital ID infrastructure available on Github in 2016 when Ms Ainge was involved – which allowed researchers and digital ID sceptics to constantly scrutinise the code and report flaws.
Some more sensitive code was not made publicly available.
More than half of Estonians were now voting online at elections, with trust gained by making the code behind it public. “The source code for the electoral software is open source, so anyone can audit it,” she said.
It was scrutiny from those who opposed the code that helped make the system more secure by identifying flaws.
“Researchers who were against the concept of voting online, who were desperately trying to find those faults. They were a pain in the in the backside, but at the same time, it's thanks to people like that that we have secure systems,” she said.
Estonia has previously come under extensive suspected Russian cyber-attacks, including a wave in 2007. “Our adversaries will find any flaw in any system that we launch. It's better if it's people who are aligned to us who are also able to audit those systems,” she said.
Another key feature was to store the data in multiple databases, rather “a single super database” which would paralyse the whole system in the event of failure or attack.
