MoU with Scottish Government lays ground for increased use of sign-in platform and work on national identity assurance mechanism
The Improvement Service (IS) has agreed a fresh memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Scottish Government to spread the use of its myaccount sign-in for online services and to continue their collaboration on the latter’s Online Identity Assurance (OIA) programme.
IS, the national improvement organisation for local government in Scotland, said it has refreshed the MoU on the use of the platform to run for three years beginning next month, and that there are plans to begin its use in a raft of new services in the coming weeks.
This include the Parents Portal, NHS Scotland’s Health and Social Care Portal as a proof of concept, and for South Lanarkshire Council.
It is also planning to develop a ‘next generation’ version of myaccount and plans to appoint a technology partner soon.
IS said the existing version of myaccount is being used by an increasing number of organisations – although it was not specific about the number – and has almost 500,000 members of the public signed up to use it.
Authentication effort
Its commitment to working with the Scottish Government on the OIA programme follows the announcement late last year by the Digital Directorate that it is working on an online identity assurance and authentication mechanism for the country’s public services. This will apparently provide a Scottish alternative to Whitehall’s GOV.UK Verify platform.
Related to this, IS pointed towards plans a Digicheck service to support the management of a digital identity by drawing up multiple trusted identity stores, and a Data Hub Self-Service Portal.
It also working on two-factor authentication and plans system and process changes to meet the demands of the General Data Protection Regulation, which is due to come into force in late May.
