UK.gov's Verify has 'significantly' missed every target, groans spending watchdog The full extent of how far short the UK government's expensive, digital-first identity assurance scheme has fallen was revealed today by a brutal report on Verify by the country's spending watchdog. Flatline blip on a medical heart monitor UK.gov withdraws life support from flagship digital identity system READ MORE Among …
"it isn't clear what will happen to DWP's use of the system after April 2020, which is when the government will farm Verify out to the private sector"
I thought that would have been obvious? It'll be hacked, they'll be a mass data leak. The company concerned will talk about "how seriously" they take security and the government will kick off another flagship project and we'll be back here again in 2-5 years time depending on how long they can drag out the procurement process.
For most government services, they really only need to know who you are if they're giving you money. - for that, these days, they require you to have a bank account.- or you're giving them money. Either way, the bank/payment processor have already done an identity check. For anything else (like checking your tax bill or NI contributions) they would historically simply have written to you, so why they suddenly need documentation they have never previously required is beyond me. Maybe we should just take the Norwegian approach and make everyone's tax returns public.
That would also come with big savings.
Make access to benefits dependent on having a bank account to prove your id.
Banks don't want to deal with people who have no money and live in areas where nobody has any money.
Huge savings on benefits
I'm sure the banks would be willing to help out like that. After all, the country needs to start rebuilding its cash reserves so that we'll be ready to give all our money to the banks the next time they fall for a foreign investment scam.
"They really only need to know who you are if they're giving you money. - for that, these days, they require you to have a bank account"
Well HMRC sent me a cheque last month, for a VAT refund, even though they have my bank account details so that they can DD VAT when I owe them, so not always.
...or take out a license on the New Zealand system which, IME works rather well, and is already an English language implementation.
On second thoughts, DON'T! The moment a working system gets into UK Civil Service hands the Not Made Here syndrome will kick in and the formerly working package would be 'modified', AKA fscked over, until it becomes HMG-certified junk. Followed by promotions and bonuses for all concerned.
This is true, but look at Universal Credit.
Around the same number as the population is on it. One system works well, the other despite its limited field of application is the subject of a review by Lord Fuster-Cluck. I suspect the Estonians could do a better job of scaling, provided the UK bureaucracy was treated the way the Government treats benefit claimants.
I thought part of the point of Universal Credit was that it withheld payments? Thus the government has to shell out less, and claimants are 'encouraged' to find an alternate source of income for such luxuries as food and rent.
After all, the government has repeatedly said that the system is on track and they're hoping to roll it out country-wide, despite it being responsible for people dying. Why do that if it's not working as intended?
A few years ago I had big BIG trouble with the HMRC SA login (don't get me started on that abomination...!) and decided to try Verify. Luckily this was months before the Jan, 31 deadline so I had enough time to work my way through this thing... you'll need it if you succeed at all. A few thousand lost hairs later and surrounded by heaps of paper files I not even knew I had (my wife knew, phew!) I had a Verify account.
The people who designed this system live on another planet where, among other things, the word world-class doesn't mean what it means on earth.
"For the people who designed the system, registering is easy"
They are born administrators who horde, classify and can instantly lay their hands on any piece of paper they need. Archaeologists classify people according to their material culture. These people are the Chitty People.
When I wanted to check some pension details, the gov.uk website offered me the choice of signing in with Government Gateway, Verify, or using an ID from a German scheme. Of them all, government gateway was by far the easiest to set up, just the usual website signup system with some extra verification behind the scenes. Verify looked far more fiddly & complex, with too much sharing of data via other sites.
How true. I'd already posted some time ago what I thought of Verify. So for my last tax return, I thought I'd use Gov Gateway instead. Alas, failure there too, I'd probably set up an account in a previous life, but the system was utterly unable to let me retrieve my identifiers.
So it was back to Verify. That's when I discovered that RoyalMail had disappeared from the list of providers, and I had to create a brand new account with PostOffice. Miraculously, it worked on first attempt, but I don't know what's in store for the next time I try it.
"...throwing money at the proverbial dead horse"
An interesting article though not much of a surprise given that "Government" and "IT project" always seem to end disastrously and cost us, the tax-payer a lot of money.
What spoiled it for me was your mixing of two metaphors. It's either "Throwing money down the drain" or "Flogging a dead horse".
Though on second look you might have hit the nail on the head because as far as I can see this bunch of incompetents is doing both with this project.
Last week the NAO were reporting on the massive waste of public money involved in asking Crapita to fsck up the army's recruitment
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/01/capita_mod_defence_recruiting_system_project_pac_report/
This week it's the unusable and shambolic Verify system. I wonder what it will be next week?
The NAO actually do a good job highlighting massive wastes of public money but seem to be powerless to do anything about it.
Until a civil servant or politician loses their job over this it'll just keep on happening
Asking the civil service or politicians to control their spending is just like asking Jimmy Saville to babysit for you
Verify never sounded like it was going to go anywhere. I hope this doesn't sink GDS though. The government needs protection from the big System Integrators like Kainos/Accenture. They're the only government department with technical chops to keep these guys honest. Otherwise, we're going to be in an endless loop of spending.
Unfortunately GDS have become the problem, rather than part of the solution. I had to deal with them for part of my job and we had to use their Government approved font on a website we where creating for them, with Government approved text, which contained characters that weren't in the font. Nice.
I once knew a bunch of GDS staff who moved together en-masse to a new project in the private sector. They were the most arrogant, clueless and downright fucking stupid clique of people I’ve ever worked with, and in 30 years I’ve worked with all types! I laughed my ass off when they were all summarily told to leave.
It reminded me of being a big thing at school, and then going to Uni to discover you’re just not that special. They left the comfort of central government where the baseline competence level is pumping out gold-plated turds, and discovered that a high-pressure cost-sensitive environment requires some actual knowledge and experience.
I once knew a bunch of GDS staff who moved together en-masse to a new project in the private sector. They were the most arrogant, clueless and downright fucking stupid clique of people I’ve ever worked with, and in 30 years I’ve worked with will all types! I laughed my ass off when they were all summarily told to leave.
I heard that FB now offers 2FA for even more security
And has the benefit that FB already know everything about you[1] so you don't have to re-enter data..
[1] Unless you are evil anti-tech luddites that refuse to use FB. Or, as I prefer to think "people who don't want a faceless, amoral, evil corporation sell data about you to other evil, amoral companies and state security bodies.."
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