Select committee inquiry
Accessing public services through the Government’s Verify digital system inquiry
Closed
What the inquiry looked at
“Scope of the inquiry GOV.UK Verify (Verify) is the government’s flagship identity verification platform. It was intended to be the default way for people to prove their identity when using digital services that need to know who the user is, for services such as claiming tax back or receiving benefit payments. Users sign up for Verify, pick from a list of “identity providers”, and then get a log-in to access the services they need. However, some members of the public have experienced problems with the system. For example, of the 70% of Universal Credit claimants who signed up, only 38% can successfully verify their identity online. A recent National Audit Office (NAO) report found that the performance of Verify has consistently been below the standards the Government Digital Service (GDS) originally set. In 2016, GDS forecast that 25 million people would use Verify by April 2020 and they would be able to access 46 government services online by March 2018. However, at February 2019 only 3.6 million people had signed up and 19 government services currently use Verify, but 11 of these can still be accessed through other online systems. GDS intended that Verify would be largely funded by the departments using it by March 2018, but low take-up means that government continues to fund it centrally. At December 2018, Verify and its predecessor programme (the Identity Assurance Programme) had cost the taxpayer £154 million. At £58 million, the biggest category of costs is payments to providers. The Cabinet Office and HM Treasury have decided to stop funding for Verify in March 2020. After that point, GDS intends that the private sector will take responsibility for Verify, including investment to ensure its future delivery. However, the NAO report found that GDS and the Cabinet Office have not been clear about how providers will take over control and management of Verify in the future. On 18 March, the Public Accounts Committee will question officials in the Cabinet Office and GDS, alongside the original architects of the programme, about the poor performance and costs of the Verify programme. Probing the reviews that were carried out, the Committee will seek to challenge officials on early indications that Verify would not meet its targets, the decisions consistently taken to continue and the future plan once public funding stops in 2020.”
The committee's words, from the inquiry page on parliament.uk ↗.
What it found
In the committee's words, from the summary of 95th Report - Accessing public services through the Government's Verify digital system ↗
GOV.UK Verify (Verify) was heralded as a flagship digital programme for government, but three years after it went live, the programme has not delivered value for money and members of the public using the system have been hampered by a catalogue of problems, including difficulty signing up and accessing multiple government services. Verify clearly demonstrates many of the failings we see all too often on large government projects:
expectations were over-optimistic from the start, key targets have been badly missed and results simply not delivered.
Only 19 government services have adopted Verify, fewer than half the number expected; and only 3.9 million people have signed up as Verify users, less than one-sixth of the forecast 25 million users by 2020. Some of the most vulnerable people using the system—such as those applying for Universal Credit — are among the worst affected. Despite over 20 internal and external reviews, the Government Digital Service (GDS) and the Cabinet Office have failed to get the programme on track. Six months after announcing that public funding would stop in March 2020, GDS and the Cabinet Office have not resolved major uncertainties about how Verify will operate beyond that date.
What the government said
No government response is linked to this report.
How the inquiry ran
Each dot is a dated item listed on this page, from the inquiry's opening on 5 March 2019 to 8 May 2019.
- Oral evidence 18 Mar 2019
- Report 8 May 2019
What it recommended 0 recommendations · 27 conclusions
1GDS has failed to meet any of its original performance targets for Verify and vastly...
Concluded (the committee's words)
GDS has failed to meet any of its original performance targets for Verify and vastly overestimated the benefits it could achieve. GDS set over-optimistic performance expectations for Verify. It forecast that 25 million people would be using Verify by 2020, when in fact only 3.9 million were using it as of March 2019 — less than one sixth of the target. GDS also predicted that at least 46 government services would adopt Verify by March 2018, but at March 2019 only 19 services were using it to verify people’s identities. Poor performance has directly affected the level of expected benefits, which are based on anticipated take-up. Compared to its original estimate of £2.5 billion of benefits over 10 years, GDS is now estimating £366 million of benefits over Verify’s lifetime. Not only is this a striking reduction, we are also sceptical about the validity of benefits claimed, given that the National Audit Office could not replicate the benefits using data supplied by GDS. An unknown amount of costs have been shunted onto other government departments, such as the costs of reconfiguring their systems to use Verify and additional manual processing costs for people unable to use Verify. Recommendation: The Cabinet Office should write to us before the summer recess setting out the lessons it has learned from the failure of the Verify programme, and what steps it is taking to prevent similar failures in future.
2People using Verify have been badly served by an onerous system that is not fit...
Concluded (the committee's words)
People using Verify have been badly served by an onerous system that is not fit for purpose. Only around half of people who attempt to sign up to Verify succeed in doing so in a single attempt. It is even lower for people trying to apply for Universal Credit through Verify, since they are often less likely to have the documents required such as passports. Despite Universal Credit being Verify’s biggest customer, just 38% of Universal Credit claimants can successfully use Verify when applying for the benefit. As well as being unfit for purpose, this is incurring extra costs for the taxpayer: the Department for Work & Pensions expects to spend around £40 million over 10 years on processing applications for Universal Credit manually. In addition, signing up as a Verify user does not guarantee that people will be able to access the government service they wanted in the first place. Verify users can be ‘locked out’ if pre-existing data held on them by the service does not match their Verify details. Recommendations: GDS should, by the 2019 summer recess, write to us setting what changes are being made to Verify to better support people claiming Universal Credit. The Cabinet Office, GDS and Department for Work & Pensions should agree and set specific targets for the number of people they aim to get applying for Universal Credit through Verify.
3GDS’s inability to get buy-in from departments ultimately led to Verify’s failure.
Concluded (the committee's words)
GDS’s inability to get buy-in from departments ultimately led to Verify’s failure. GDS failed to develop a product that departments wanted to use, and its later efforts to increase government usage (for example, by offering Verify to local authorities and the NHS) floundered. The Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary acknowledged that GDS did not convince enough departments to adopt Verify to make it work. HM Revenue & Customs, for example, felt that Verify did not meet its needs, and 6 Accessing public services through the Government’s Verify digital system continued to use and develop its own Government Gateway system; only around 4% of its customers use Verify to access its services. We see this as another case of the Cabinet Office coming unstuck after seeking to impose a central initiative on unpersuaded departments — shared services being a notorious past example. Recommendation: The Cabinet Office needs to secure the commitment of departments to cross-government programmes. In the initial business case for such programmes, it should outline how it will get buy-in from departments and other key stakeholders, and what action they will take should departments go back on their commitments. We expect to see such plans in place when we examine cross-government programmes in future.
4Verify was characterised by poor decision making by the Cabinet Office and GDS, compounded now...
Concluded (the committee's words)
Verify was characterised by poor decision making by the Cabinet Office and GDS, compounded now by their failure to take proper accountability. The programme lacked strong leadership and oversight, despite being subjected to over 20 internal and external reviews. The Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary said he was sorry the Cabinet Office did not intervene earlier. However, even now, the Cabinet Office and GDS are not taking proper accountability for the programme’s shortcomings. The witnesses did not take seriously enough their responsibilities to explain and account for why the programme failed to meet its original goal of providing a single identity assurance service across government. They chose instead to emphasise the work currently being done to develop a wider market for identity verification services. It is simply not good enough to rewrite the programme’s aims after the event to try to explain away underperformance. This Committee’s previous report on accountability for taxpayers’ money makes clear that Accounting Officers have a primary duty to ensure projects are a good use of public money and consequently must raise value for money concerns at the appropriate time. Recommendation: For its projects at risk of failure, the Cabinet Office should ensure Accounting Officer (AO) assessments are conducted at the proper time. It should provide us with an update on how many AO assessments have been undertaken in the last 12 months, and what actions it has taken as a result of these.
5The Cabinet Office and GDS have no meaningful plan for what will happen to Verify...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Cabinet Office and GDS have no meaningful plan for what will happen to Verify post-2020. Major uncertainties remain about how Verify will operate once public funding stops in 2020. We are seriously concerned that the assurances the Cabinet Office gave us for the future were rooted in what, at this stage, are unknowns. The uncertainties include how the market for verifying people’s identities will develop and the price that will be charged for verification services. This is not a strong foundation for the future of a flagship digital programme. There is a clear risk that government services using Verify could face large and unaffordable cost increases from 2020 if the market price is significantly higher than the current contract price. GDS expects the Crown Commercial Service to negotiate an attractive bulk rate for government with providers. But government is essentially ‘betting’ on a private sector market emerging that can provide services more cheaply than anything it could build or buy for itself. Accessing public services through the Government’s Verify digital system 7 Recommendation: Alongside its Treasury Minute response, the Cabinet Office and GDS should write to us by the summer recess setting out the detailed plan for how Verify’s services will be maintained after 2020, including how government services using Verify will be protected from unaffordable cost increases.
6The Cabinet Office and GDS have not protected taxpayers’ interests in securing Verify’s intellectual property.
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Cabinet Office and GDS have not protected taxpayers’ interests in securing Verify’s intellectual property. Verify’s intellectual property includes the Verify brand, its public portal and the infrastructure ‘hub’ that links Verify’s users, providers and government services. The Cabinet Office and GDS seem to have given little thought to the value of this intellectual property, and how taxpayers’ investment in it would be recouped should private providers secure substantial profits from Verify in the future. They have not yet had discussions about what will happen to Verify’s intellectual property, including whether it will be sold or given to providers. Recommendation: The Cabinet Office and GDS should take urgent action to clarify the value of Verify’s intellectual property, to protect the interests of taxpayers. They should detail this in the plan we have requested by the summer recess. 8 Accessing public services through the Government’s Verify digital system 1 Performance, costs and benefits
7Some departments have continued to use and develop alternative ways for people to access their...
Concluded (the committee's words)
Some departments have continued to use and develop alternative ways for people to access their services online. For example, HMRC did not adopt Verify for all its services, in part because Verify could not deal with business customers or agents acting on behalf of others. Instead, HMRC continued to develop and enhance its own system, Government Gateway. Only around 4% of HMRC customers now use Verify to access its services.10
8From 2016, GDS pursued several attempts to boost user volumes, such as offering Verify to...
Concluded (the committee's words)
From 2016, GDS pursued several attempts to boost user volumes, such as offering Verify to local authorities and the NHS. However, no local authority currently uses Verify.11 GDS also introduced a new category of verifications that allowed people’s identities to be verified to a lower level of assurance (level of assurance 1 or LOA1, rather than Verify’s standard level of assurance, LOA2), but this too failed to increase user numbers significantly.12
9The Cabinet Office acknowledged that it and GDS could not ‘bring the government market to...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Cabinet Office acknowledged that it and GDS could not ‘bring the government market to the table’ and had gone on for too long trying to do this.13 The problems that GDS and the Cabinet Office faced in getting departments to adopt Verify share many similarities with other central initiatives we have seen, notably shared services. This Committee’s 2016 report on shared service centres found that — as with Verify — the Cabinet Office did not secure sufficient buy-in from departments, did not create an environment of collaboration among departments, and did not intervene effectively when things began to go wrong (in part because it could not instruct departments to keep to the migration timetable).14 Costs and benefits
10GDS spent a total of £154 million on Verify and its predecessor programme between April...
Concluded (the committee's words)
GDS spent a total of £154 million on Verify and its predecessor programme between April 2011 and September 2018. This was less than GDS had anticipated, and is because the lower than expected volume of Verify users reduced the amounts payable to providers.15 However, GDS has not attempted to quantify the overall costs of Verify to government as a whole, and £154 million is likely to underestimate total costs across government.16 Departments have borne the costs of integrating Verify into their online services and incurred other costs resulting from problems with the Verify system. For example, large numbers of people applying for Universal Credit have struggled to successfully use Verify. Consequently the Department for Work & Pensions expects to spend around £40 million over 10 years on processing applications for Universal Credit manually.17 8 Qq 31, 35, 48, 102 9 Q 95 10 Q 95; C&AG’s Report, paras 1.13, 1.18 11 Qq 57–59 12 Qq 70, 103; C&AG’s Report, para 1.10 13 Q 150 14 Qq 36, 102; Committee of Public Accounts, Shared service centres, Twentieth Report of Session 2016–17, HC 297, October 2016, Conclusions and recommendations, para 3 15 Q 30 16 Qq 38–40; C&AG’s Report, para 2.2 17 C&AG’s Report, 1.14 10 Accessing public services through the Government’s Verify digital system
11The Cabinet Office and GDS told us they regard Verify as successful because claimed benefits...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Cabinet Office and GDS told us they regard Verify as successful because claimed benefits are higher than the costs of the programme. However, they acknowledged that Verify did not achieve the level of benefits forecast in its original business case.18 In 2016, Verify’s benefits were estimated to be £2.5 billion over the 10 years from 2016–17 to 2026–
27GDS now estimates that £366 million of benefits will be achieved between 2012–13 and 2019–20.19
Concluded (the committee's words)
GDS now estimates that £366 million of benefits will be achieved between 2012–13 and 2019–20.19
12The Cabinet Office and GDS believe that the benefit-cost ratio of the programme is 2.4:1.20...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Cabinet Office and GDS believe that the benefit-cost ratio of the programme is 2.4:1.20 Its calculation includes supposed benefits up to 2019–20, but costs only up to September 2018. It does not factor in the additional costs that will be incurred until government funding stops in March 2020. These additional costs could be up to £21.5 million, the amount at which government has capped expenditure on Verify from October 2018 to March 2020.21
13The National Audit Office was not able to replicate the claimed level of benefits for...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The National Audit Office was not able to replicate the claimed level of benefits for the Verify programme from the information that GDS provided.22 For example, the largest category of GDS’s estimated benefits is avoided building costs, or avoided spending by departments on building alternative identity verification systems. GDS reported validated savings of £111 million from 2012–13 to 2014–15 for avoided building costs relating to Universal Credit, an average of £37 million a year. It has continued to claim the same yearly amount — £37 million — for avoided building costs from 2015–16 to 2019–20, although this figure has not been independently audited or validated.23 GDS recognised that such benefits were difficult to measure, but said they adhered to the normal methodology approved by the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury.24 User experience
14We understand that people have often found Verify “clunky” to use and many have faced...
Concluded (the committee's words)
We understand that people have often found Verify “clunky” to use and many have faced problems even signing up with it in the first place.25 GDS assesses the programme’s performance at verifying people’s identities through a measure called the verification success rate. This rate measures the proportion of people who can sign up for a Verify user account, having had their identities successfully confirmed by a provider.26 Only 50% of people attempting to sign up were able to successfully create a Verify account.27 The Cabinet Office acknowledged that Verify’s identity checking was perhaps “not to the same standard” as other checks that take place in government.28
15Government services using Verify each have different verification success rates.
Concluded (the committee's words)
Government services using Verify each have different verification success rates. This is in part because different services require different levels of assurance, with higher levels of assurance entailing more checks. For example, GDS told us that for the health service pension, which requires a relatively low level of assurance (LOA1), 95% of users were able 18 Q 30 19 Qq 29, 37; C&AG’s Report, para 1.18 20 Qq 29, 37 21 Q 105; C&AG’s Report, para 3.7 22 Q106; C&AG’s Report, para 1.19 23 C&AG’s Report, para 1.20 24 Q 106 25 Qq 155–157; Mr P.G. Slater (GVS0001) 26 C&AG’s Report, para 1.7 27 Government Digital Service, GOV.UK Verify Dashboard webpage, ‘GOV.UK Verify’ for week ending 31 March 2019, accessed 4 April 2019. Available at: www.gov.uk/performance/govuk-verify 28 Q 159 Accessing public services through the Government’s Verify digital system 11 to sign up to Verify on a first attempt. For Verify’s best performing LOA2 services (which involve a higher level of assurance), GDS told us that successful verifications are in the range of 70% to 80%.29
16The success rate for a service also depends on the demographic characteristics of those using...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The success rate for a service also depends on the demographic characteristics of those using the service. For example, Universal Credit is Verify’s largest customer, but only 38% of Universal Credit claimants can successfully create a Verify user account. GDS attributed this low success rate to people on Universal Credit not having strong digital footprints.30 GDS told us it had recently employed two people from the Department for Work & Pensions’ Universal Credit team to work with it to improve the verification success rate for Universal Credit.31
17Even if people do manage to sign up for a Verify account, this does not...
Concluded (the committee's words)
Even if people do manage to sign up for a Verify account, this does not mean they will be able to access the government services they actually want to use. This is because government services will compare an individual’s Verify details with any pre-existing data they have on that individual.32 For instance, if someone’s name details do not match, that person will not be able to access the relevant government service. GDS’s verification success rate does not measure whether people can get to the government service they want in the end; it measures only those entering the Verify service and leaving it. GDS told us it limits its success measure to the parts of the process it has control over to protect users’ privacy.33 29 Q 95. For more details on the requirements for different levels of assurance, see C&AG’s Report, Appendix Two. 30 Q 95 31 Qq 153–54 32 C&AG’s Report, para 1.17 33 Q 93 12 Accessing public services through the Government’s Verify digital system 2 Decision making and Verify’s future Decision making
18The Cabinet Office and GDS have shown a lack of strong leadership and oversight at...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Cabinet Office and GDS have shown a lack of strong leadership and oversight at key points of the Verify programme. The Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary told us that he could not remember if he was concentrating on Verify’s business case in 2015, but did intervene heavily throughout 2016 as it became clear that the programme was underperforming. However, he acknowledged that he might have been “a bit late” in intervening – possibly six months too late.34
19The Cabinet Office’s interventions included changing Verify’s leadership in 2016 and commissioning several reviews of...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Cabinet Office’s interventions included changing Verify’s leadership in 2016 and commissioning several reviews of the programme. There have been over 20 internal and external reviews of Verify in total, many of which sought to identify the problems leading to low take-up.35 One key internal review was carried out after Nic Harrison became the Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) in October 2016. His review concluded that Verify was unlikely to deliver in its current form. This assessment came only a month after the 2016 business case had been signed off by HM Treasury, and six months after contracts had been signed with additional providers.36
20In October 2018, following Verify’s numerous reviews (including a highly critical one from the Infrastructure...
Concluded (the committee's words)
In October 2018, following Verify’s numerous reviews (including a highly critical one from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority), the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury decided to stop government funding in March 2020. They also announced plans to pass responsibilities for Verify to the private sector.37 GDS is now focused on helping develop a market for identity verification services that spans both public and private sectors, in preparation for Verify’s planned transition to the private sector.38 The Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary told us he believes the programme is now on the right track: “Now we have set it in the best way we can, and that is, in some senses, why I am sorry that we did not intervene earlier, frankly”.39 Accountability
21Verify’s leaders demonstrated a poor understanding of accountability for the programme.
Concluded (the committee's words)
Verify’s leaders demonstrated a poor understanding of accountability for the programme. Throughout our evidence session, all three witnesses — the Accounting Officer, the current Director General and the former SRO — blamed the over-optimism of their predecessors in setting Verify’s original targets too high.40 It is true that the original projections predate all the individual witnesses’ time on the programme. However, as Verify’s leaders, the witnesses have an important responsibility to explain and account for what went wrong with the programme beyond their individual roles in it.
22The witnesses also ran the risk of rewriting the aims of the programme after the...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The witnesses also ran the risk of rewriting the aims of the programme after the event. The Cabinet Office and GDS now emphasise the role of Verify in creating a market for digital identity services, with a range of private sector providers and a set of 34 Qq 44–48 35 C&AG’s Report, para 3.4 36 Qq 49–52, 60 37 C&AG’s Report, paras 3.4, 3.7 38 Qq 129, 132, 143; C&AG’s Report, para 3.10 39 Q 150 40 Qq 30, 55, 99, 107, 149 Accessing public services through the Government’s Verify digital system 13 internationally-recognised identity standards.41 The Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary told us this focus on the development of the market is now the priority,42 rather than the programme’s original aim of providing a common verification service across government. However, GDS’s own strategic objectives for Verify include the crucial aim of achieving mass adoption of the service, which we noted is far from being achieved.43
23This Committee reported on accountability for taxpayers’ money in 2016, including accountability for major projects...
Concluded (the committee's words)
This Committee reported on accountability for taxpayers’ money in 2016, including accountability for major projects and programmes such as Verify. That report noted that since 2014, SROs have been directly accountable to Parliament for project implementation, although Accounting Officers (AOs) retain overall responsibility for projects and the spending involved.44 As part of their responsibilities to account for departmental spending, AOs must satisfy themselves that projects and other initiatives are a good use of taxpayers’ money and are on track. Where an AO has concerns about a project’s value for money or its feasibility, we recommended that he or she should seek an AO assessment: a document that enables the AO to systematically evaluate potential concerns about the use of public money.45 We are not aware of any AO assessment being sought for the Verify programme. Verify’s future
24The Verify programme will change significantly after March 2020, when current contracts end and government...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Verify programme will change significantly after March 2020, when current contracts end and government funding stops. GDS’s intention is that the private sector will take over responsibility for Verify at this point. GDS told us that it and the Crown Commercial Service are currently in negotiations with providers about the successor programme after March 2020.46 From discussions with providers so far, GDS was confident that providers have ambitious plans and will keep investing in Verify.47 GDS envisages that Verify will vastly increase its user numbers through expansion to the private sector. It told us that over 90% of citizens’ use of identity is in the private sector, so it believes access to this bigger market means Verify’s strategic objective of mass adoption can and will be achieved.48
25However, there are several uncertainties about how Verify will operate in future, with major implications...
Concluded (the committee's words)
However, there are several uncertainties about how Verify will operate in future, with major implications for government services using Verify. These include how the market for verifying people’s identities will develop and the price that will be set for verification services.49 Government services using Verify could face large cost increases if the market price is significantly higher than the current contract price — although the Cabinet Office and GDS expect the opposite to occur and costs to become cheaper for government in future. GDS said it and the Crown Commercial Service would renegotiate costs to government for verification services after March 2020. It was optimistic that a competitive mass market of providers would emerge, from which government could get a good deal through negotiating a bulk rate for government services.50 The former Verify SRO told 41 Qq 32–33, 104 42 Q 150 43 Qq 29–31, 123–124 44 Committee of Public Accounts, Accountability to Parliament for taxpayers’ money, Thirty-ninth Report of Session 2015–16, HC 732, May 2016, para 21 45 Committee of Public Accounts, Accountability to Parliament for taxpayers’ money, Thirty-ninth Report of Session 2015–16, HC 732, May 2016, Conclusions and recommendations, paras 3–4 46 Q 122 47 Q 114 48 Qq 113, 123–124 49 C&AG’s Report, para 3.8 50 Qq 126, 136 14 Accessing public services through the Government’s Verify digital system us “this is a bet on the mass market emerging… We are making the judgment that what we see in the private sector is the emergence of a private sector market for ID. That will become cheaper than anything that Government can build for itself or buy for itself in perpetuity”.51 Intellectual property
26Government’s intellectual property in Verify includes the GOV.UK Verify brand (which is registered as a...
Concluded (the committee's words)
Government’s intellectual property in Verify includes the GOV.UK Verify brand (which is registered as a trade mark), its public portal and the infrastructure ‘hub’ that links Verify’s users, providers and government services. Providers own other intellectual property relating to the systems used to verify people’s identities, as they have each invested in developing their own verification systems.52 GDS also said that government owns the identity standards it has developed, which are published and available to all.53
Evidence
Oral evidence sessions 1
- 18 Mar 2019No witnesses recordedparliament.uk ↗