How Estonia makes Identity work

Estonia’s X-Road, source: e-Estonia

The reason we have big problems with government identity projects in the UK is that we don’t have an Identity Card. It is government policy that any government ID program has to function without falling back on an ID card, which is a reaction to the failure of the government’s attempt to introduce an ID card back in 2006.

Estonia is the best example of how online government and identity work. One reason it is good is because it is simple. From Estonia, we can see there are two key aspects of e-Government that are required to create something that works. First, the government needs to be properly online, and second it needs to know who people are.

Estonia achieves this with two things. X-Road is a layer between the various silos of government data which connects them together. It can pull down and write up data and pass that data along the X-Road. The second key component is the digital identity issued by the government. In Estonia, people are given an ID number at birth, this then forms the core of a digital identity that is built up over time. That identity comes in the form of an ID card, but can also reside within a phone. The external manifestation of the accumulated identity is called a token, and that token can be a chip in a card, or it can be a chip in a phone.

X-Road and digital identity combined mean that the government can easily find, read, and write data about a person, and associate that data with the person because they can prove who they are easily. X-Road + Identity + Digital Token.

In the UK we do not really have an identity number. Yes, we have national security numbers, but they are not as fundamentally tied to people as a core identity number. Passports are worse. Your passport number changes each time you get a new one. And passports were designed to be travel documents, not core identification documents. Your passport number does not associate you with your healthcare records, or your tax return. So that doesn’t work. Finally, we do not have an X-Road.

This is one reason why Verify failed. It only persuaded a small number of government departments to participate. So why would I, the user, bother going through the hassle of using Verify if I couldn’t access everything? The prevailing solution, to create separate Identity systems in NHS, HMRC, and more, will just make that worse. To me, the Government is one entity. Why should I have to use different systems to access different bits of it? An X-Road allows the user to log in once, to one portal, and from there to access everything.

Estonians log into a portal where not only can they see everything, from their healthcare records to tax returns, school reports, to planning applications. But also they control that information. They can give or take away access to it, update it, and see who else has tried to look at it. This is worlds apart from the UK.

The UK could go some way towards this. Firstly, it could try to connect together more government information, using something like an X-Road. That would incentivise users to access e-Government. This needs firm leadership from the top, with Downing Street insisting on it, rather than different ministries taking their own approaches. Secondly, there needs to be an easy way to log in, and to prove you are who you say you are. If the government won’t try again with an ID card, they should leave that part to third party identity companies, like Sovrin, Tradle, Glyph, and Sedici. Let them and us build a robust online identity, and use that to prove to the government we are us. More on how that could work here.

The author is a former Special Advisor to Estonia’s e-Residency Program, an advisor to Glyph, and a Director of BBFA.

Tobias Stone @ Newsquare
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