Image source: GOV.UK, Open Government Licence v3.0
The One Login service is set to go into beta phase for its use by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), with plans for a major migration away from Government Gateway this year.
Tom Read, director of the Government Digital Service (GDS), said this will provide the main focus of work on the programme over the next six months, marking a significant stage in extending the use of the service across central government.
Speaking with UKAuthority, he said: “By the end of this calendar year you’ll have tens of millions of people with One Login able to log in seamlessly to different services. In itself that’s a huge achievement and I’m really proud of the team.”
GDS has been developing One Login as single form of sign-in and identity verification for central government services. HMRC’s migration to the service will provide a major boost to the programme as it is one of the public sector’s largest bodies in terms of accounts and interactions with the public.
Read said it is now being used for 30 services overall and that there is a roadmap in place to meet a target of 145 by the end of the 2024-25 financial year.
Long tail of services
“We’ve actually found an additional 160 services that we think we should bring onboard,” he said. “We’re not committed to that but I would like to see this as an ongoing, rolling, long tail of services coming onboard.”
The scaling up of the service has been identified as one of the missions Transforming for a digital future roadmap, and last week the Central Digital and Data Office published a guidance note reiterating the requirement for central government organisations to show their plans for beginning to use it.
Read added that for the foreseeable future the focus will be on applying the service to central government, but that he hopes it could be opened up to local government in the longer term.
He also said the next step will be using the single account for users in a way that is integrated with databases across government for a shift towards “personalised and proactive services”.
The full interview with Tom Read will appear on UKAuthority next week.
