GOV.UK Verify providers complete deletion of all user accounts – PublicTechnology

The identity assurance platform that was decommissioned last year created around 10 million accounts during its years in operation, but the final remaining delivery partners have concluded the deletion process

The last remaining identity providers that supported the operation of the defunct GOV.UK Verify tool have now completed the process of deleting all user accounts – for a service that registered about 10 million users during its lifespan.

Verify guidance documents posted on GOV.UK were yesterday amended to update the ‘What’s happening to your data’ section, which provides details of how user information will be handled by the verification tool’s former commercial identity partners: the Post Office; and Digidentity.

This segment previously advised visitors that the Post Office “will delete all user accounts when GOV.UK Verify closes”, while Digidentity “will delete user accounts after two years of inactivity” – or if the user takes action to shut down their own account.

The guidance now states: “Post Office and Digidentity have deleted all GOV.UK Verify accounts.”

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But users are advised that, while their accounts may no longer exist, the two companies “are required to keep some information for up to seven years… for audit, counter-fraud and record-keeping reasons”.

Confirmation that all accounts have been erased comes 20 months after sign-ups were closed at the end of 2022. The final government services that used Verify as part of their sign-up or login process had migrated to an alternative technology by the end of March 2023 – at which point the identity-assurance tool was formally decommissioned.

After launching in May 2016, Verify was initially supported by seven identity providers. But, in October 2018, CitizenSafe and Royal Mail ceased support for the tool. Within 18 months they were followed by Barclays, Experian, and SecureIdentity – leaving the Post Office and the Digidentity as the only remaining issuers of Verify accounts for its final years in operation.

While it never came close to the kind of uptake it was intended to achieve, during its seven-years lifespan Verify did register about 10 million users across 27 government services that it supported, according to the Government Digital Service, which developed the technology.

GDS, and its sister agency the Central Digital and Data Office, are currently in the process of rolling out One Login – which government hopes will succeed where Verify did not, in establishing a single sign-in system for accessing citizen services across all departments.