Deloitte Unveils ‘Agile Identity’

In an article published in June’s edition of Deloitte Insights ¹, the consultancy firm sets out a new vision of identity and claims that the future of government rests on the future of identity.

Following the award of two UK contracts to Deloitte (February 2022 for £4.8 million and April for £9 million) to build the digital ID app ‘One Login’ to replace the now defunct Gov.UK Verify, the consultancy firm describes three different approaches to citizen identity management in the article titled ‘The future of government rests on the future of identity’.

In the centralised approach, one party, such as a government or agency, is an identity provider that transfers citizen attributes to relying parties. The advantages of this approach are that they allow more direct control for governments and accountability to citizens. The disadvantages are that they can be difficult to create (especially for large, federally organised nations), difficult to administer given the large volumes of personally identifiable information (PII) collected, and difficult to upgrade technologically when needed.

They also often create ‘honey pots’ of data attractive to attackers and are often difficult to protect. Centralisation also creates privacy concerns as a limited number of central authorities hold large volumes of user data.

The federated approach allows established identities to be accepted across connected communities or similar services. Federated systems are similar to centralised identity systems, except that a variety of brokers provide the digital identities to relying parties, often entities with similar missions (eg. government agencies). This enables portability between different applications and services since one identity can be used in different locations.

The advantage of this approach is that there are robust existing standards, meaning that new services can be set up quickly. Federated systems can also provide greater convenience for individuals since they can reuse existing identities at new services.

Fully decentralised identity systems connect many identity providers to many relying parties – distributing data and pushing control to the individual. This type of system sets citizens up with a digital ‘wallet’ that serves as a login to multiple websites and applications as well as a sort of ‘personal data’ vault.

Generally, these systems are privately held and rely on common operating standards rather than a governing body. As such, decentralised approaches offer citizens the most control over their data. But lacking any centralised authority, they can also be the most difficult to create, administer, and scale.

According to Deloitte, the nature of identity must shift to match the new context of how and where citizens and consumers assert their identity. The modern world needs a system of identity that is agile — built on portability, transparency, and individual choice.

The company argues that with so many different players pushed by so many different incentives, it is unlikely that one dominant, interoperable solution is going to emerge on its own – nor is this necessarily desirable. Instead, a common vision for agile identity is needed toward which different players can work independently.

Agile identity is a user-controlled identity that enables individuals to selectively manage the exchange of their personal attributes and data to securely interact with commercial and government services, in both the digital and physical domains.

The article then goes on to set out, using the metaphor of keys on a keyring, how agile identity might achieve a level of seamless portability using a curated ecosystem of issuers and verifiers, all working to common standards and linking to a core identity from a governing authority.

The article concludes with a call for action, claiming that agile identity offers a technology-agnostic way ahead on digital identity that government services need, and citizens want.

1 - www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/public-sector/future-of-agile-identity-solutions.html.