Digital Identity Scotland (DIS) has begun to build a prototype of a new online identity assurance system for public services in the country.
It follows the award of a contract to Mydex CIC, a platform provider for digital services, and its partner the Digital Health and Social Care Institute to work with the unit, which is part of the Scottish Government.
Mike Crockart, delivery lead for DIS, said the prototype will be used to test the technical feasibility and usability of an attributes based approach to digital identity. This follows the indication that DIS is working on attributes strategy that draws on features such as name, address, date of birth and possibly biometrics for different services as appropriate.
“As well as other things, this will test the use of a strong authentication credential (registration/login) to enable re-use across services and also establishing a citizen controlled attribute store that is also re-usable across services, with appropriate user consent to simplify access to services and reducing tedious things like form filling,” Crockart said.
He indicated that one of the early tests could focus on using attributes from the Young Scot National Entitlement Card, held in an attribute store, for opening a bank account online or registering with a college or university.
He added: “We would be particularly keen to engage with other public sector organisations as we look to gain insight from the prototype and apply this learning to a future beta/live digital identity service that meets the needs of citizens and the Scottish public sector.”
Image by Jeremy Keith, CC BY 2.0 through flickr
