“Now … the government plans to update existing laws on identity checking to enable digital identity to be used as widely as possible,” the press release read.
The government’s new Digital Identity Strategy Board also announced that the UK’s new policy will be guided by six principles – privacy, transparency, inclusivity, interoperability, proportionality, and good governance.
“We want to make it easier for people to prove their identity securely online so transactions can become even quicker - it has the potential to add billions to our economy,” the digital infrastructure minister Matt Warman said in the press release.
In August, the UK government launched a pilot of its Document Checking Service, which seeks to make passport data available for private sector organizations to check identities online.
The latest initiative has been established amid a rapid rise in identity fraud in the United Kingdom. According to the government, 223,163 cases were identified in 2019, a rise of 18 percent from the previous year.
