Building the foundations: A national roadmap for digital identity and sovereign data

Unblocking regulatory resistance to digital identity

Right now, the biggest blocker to adoption is regulatory alignment. Without a shared framework across sectors, in-house compliance teams will play it safe, shutting down innovation before it starts.

But the moment the rules shift, the brakes come off. Compliance can be encouraged to flip from gatekeeper to enabler, working hand-in-hand with technologists to use risk assessment to unlock new value for business.

To make this happen, we need regulation, compliance, and technology pulling in the same direction - with a shared vision for how digital identity can support economic growth, trust, and inclusion.

Encouragingly, the Treasury’s recent policy paper A new approach to ensure regulators and regulation support growth, sets out a bold direction of travel. Meanwhile, the Regulatory Initiatives Grid provides a mechanism for financial services.

But we need to go further and faster.

Government and industry must now come together to accelerate regulatory modernisation across the whole economy, not just in finance.

Making digital inclusion the foundation of a fair digital society

While aligning regulation, we must also recognise that not everyone starts at the same line. Millions remain digitally excluded - cut off by lack of access, skills, trust, or ID. For them, exclusion isn’t about missing out on convenience - it’s about being locked out of services, opportunities, and even identity itself.

We see the real-world fallout already. Supermarkets offer significant discounts only to loyalty card users - rewarding the digitally included, penalising the rest. What begins as a marketing incentive ends with entrenching inequality – serving the interests of omnipresent organisations not the individuals they purport to serve.

This is why implementing digital identity must be designed with inclusion at its core. As more benefits become tied to having a digital profile, we risk creating a two-tier society.

To prevent this, regulation and systems must support offline onboarding, local vouching, and gradual, trust-based identity-building. Trusted community spaces - libraries, job centres, housing teams - can serve as welcoming bridges into the digital world. These bottom-up models are already working in some areas, turning policy into people-first practice.

Digital identity should be a gateway to dignity and belonging, not another locked door. If we design for the margins, we’ll design regulation and systems that serve everyone better. We shape our technology, then our technology shapes us. Inclusion must therefore be the foundation - not an afterthought.

Providing real consumer choice

The brands we choose say something about who we are. Identity is deeply personal – it reflects not just how we’re seen, but how we see ourselves.

While the state will always have a role as the identity provider of last resort, real choice means letting people bring their own digital wallet to government – not government prescribing the one they must use.

For decades, the identity industry has been deep in the trenches of technical complexity. But in doing so, we’ve often missed the most human truth - identity isn’t just a certified credential – it’s who we are. We are not QR codes.

That’s why inclusion has to be the heartbeat of this entire agenda. For those who’ve historically been left out – like the Windrush generation – insisting on a government-issued wallet as the sole gateway to public services risks repeating the same injustices we’ve vowed to fix.

Under current plans, only the Gov.uk One Login wallet gets the keys to government services. That creates a structural imbalance. Not all wallets are equal. Citizens are boxed into using the government wallet for public services, while private options are left on the outside. In short citizens will need at least two wallets - one for government, another for everything else.

And let’s not forget the psychology of change. People are more likely to adopt something new when it gives them freedom, mastery and purpose. They resist when change is done to them. Consequently, this is where government needs to pause and reflect. Collectively, we can do better.

Building a roadmap to the future

For organisations investing in business and IT systems today – whose return on investment will be measured not in quarters, but across five-, 10-, or 15-year horizons – the need for a national roadmap is urgent.

Why? Because the shift to reusable digital identity and sovereign personal data isn’t just a new tech layer – it’s a fundamental rewire of how back-office operations function. The leap from “as is” to “to be” will not be incremental - it will be transformational. Existing workflows, compliance routines, and service delivery models will be turned inside out. This is about designing for the future, not optimising the past.

Solution architects and policy planners need a clear roadmap now. Without it, public and private actors risk designing systems for a world that will no longer exists – locking in legacy thinking just as society starts to unlock its data.

We need a roadmap that:

• Sets clear milestones for adoption across both public and private sectors with measurable targets.
• Coordinates investment in the enabling infrastructure – wallets, holder services, interoperability layers, and supplementary codes.
• Supports local ecosystems – so cities, regions, and communities can co-create identity journeys that reflect their own needs and realities.
• Champions plurality and portability – making sure citizens can bring their chosen ID, from a trusted provider, into all corners of the economy.

We therefore welcome the opportunity from the secretary of state for collaboration and innovation. We want to be equal partners in change.

If we get this right in the UK, we won’t just be rebuilding the country and creating economic growth. We’ll empower people. We’ll unlock opportunity. And we’ll show the world how democracy can evolve – and thrive – in the digital era.

Let’s now work on how we make the vision a reality.

David Crack is chair of the Association of Digital Verification Professionals, a trade body representing companies involved in the electronic validation of documents and digital identities.