The Scottish Government has joined the Open Identity Exchage (OIX) and is looking at whether they can collaborate on its work to develop an online identity assurance system.
The national Digital Directorate said that OIX – a non-profit organisation focused on trusted transactions online – provides a natural fit with what the Scottish Government is trying to do in online assurance.
The organisation collaborates with governments, councils, identity providers and others – including the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) – to deal with the relevant challenges.
The directorate is currently leading the work to develop an online identity assurance and authentication mechanism for the country’s public services. A discovery phase led to the outline of options that include supporting a number of identity providers, which could include the GOV.UK Verify platform developed by GDS.
As a first step, the directorate and OIX are going to host two workshops in Edinburgh for the Scottish public sector, technology companies and identity providers.
Previous work done by OIX in the field has included testing the details of how information from local authorities and housing associations could contribute to the GOV.UK Verify platform for online identity assurance.
Image by Simon Waldherr, CC BY-SA 3.0 through Wikimedia
