Birmingham City Council is looking to replace its online citizen registration system with a new bespoke solution.

The council has launched a market engagement exercise for suppliers to explore options for creating a secure online portal to authenticate citizens.

Whitehall’s Government Digital Service is currently rolling out its own gov.uk Verify system across Whitehall, but the prospects of it being available to local government seem as far away as ever.

Birmingham’s tender said that its proposed new system could enable Birmingham citizens “to create their own account and securely access a range of services across the council either within the portal or by providing seamless secure sign-on into online modules for services such as benefit applications”.

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Suppliers will be asked to provide details of their existing offerings which could be applied to services which are currently available through Birmingham’s online portal.

They are being asked to provide details of in-built APIs for services and systems some of which are integrated with back office systems

These include:

• Northgate MAPSS (Fleet and Waste, Environment, Commercial Waste);
• Northgate SX3 (Housing repairs and rents);
• Northgate RBIS (Revenues and Benefits);
• Carefirst (Adults and Children’s);
• Impact 360 (Parking);
• POPI (Parks);
• Leisureflex (Leisure);
• Confirm (Highways);
• WebEros (Elections).

The council is also seeking solutions for a number of “general functional requirements provided by the council’s existing online account solution, plus other technical requirements.

Meanwhile, the government’s Verify system is currently in beta mode covering access to central government services including applying for Universal Credit and logging self assessment tax returns.

In February, GDS said it was “prioritising building a scaling a service that works for users of central government services before we look at extending its use to the wider public sector”.