Cabinet Office begins procurement for next stage of Gov.uk Verify

The Cabinet Office has published a tender notice for a £150m three-year framework for the provision of identity assurance services.

Through the Gov.uk Verify platform the government is providing a new way for people to prove their identity when accessing digital services. A framework is now being procured by the Cabinet Office for use by the Government Digital Service (GDS) to expand the identity assurance services market.

The Cabinet Office is calling for 10 providers to enter the £150m framework – a significant increase from the £25m contract procured by the Department for Work and Pensions for Universal Credit in 2012. The new framework will last for three years with an option of a one-year extension.

“The aspiration is for central government, together with the providers under this framework agreement and others, to work together to develop, broaden and stimulate the market for identity assurance services,” read the tender. “This aspiration is initially focused on the wider public sector, with potential expansion into the private sector and other countries to follow.”

Contracts are expected to be awarded by April 2015.

The framework will allow citizens to prove they are who they say they are to a defined level of assurance (LoA). Initially the contracts will only be awarded for the mid-level of assurance – LoA2, which is the level Verify provides and is said to be sufficient for most government transactions. 

The tender notice states GDS is expected to procure additional services which may include LoA1 and LoA3. LoA3 is required when the relying party needs to know beyond reasonable doubt who the user is and that they are a real person, while LoA1 is for when a relying party needs to know that it is the same user returning to the service but does not need to know who that user is. 

There is also a higher LoA4 where a biometric profile is captured at the point of registration, but this is not being used by the Verify platform.