Minister claims that many Whitehall organisations have now set out a formal roadmap for implementing system, which is slated to cover ‘at least 145 services’ within the next 18 months
A total of 15 “major departments” across government have now confirmed formal plans for adopting the GOV.UK One Login system in the coming months, a minister has indicated.
The new government-wide login service is currently being used by 11 discrete services delivered by various agencies. Although it has not fully adopted the system as a means of accessing its services yet, HM Revenue and Customs has also offered users the opportunity to prove their identity via One Login.
This has significantly boosted user sign-ups for the new online government account, which now has about 2.5 million registered users.
Speaking at an event this week, civil service chief operating officer Alex Chisholm said that this figure is likely to shoot up sharply in the coming months – rising to as high as 30 million within a year.
Uptake will be boosted by widespread adoption from HMRC which, from the beginning of the next fiscal year, will require new registrants for its services to use One Login. Another of government’s biggest and most delivery-centric organisations, the Department for Work and Pensions, is also slated to begin onboarding services around the turn of the year.
These are just two of many departments that have now agreed a formal on-boarding plan with the Central Digital and Data Office – as per targets set out in government’s three-year digital and data strategy published last year.
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“The One Login programme has agreed an adoption roadmap with 15 major government departments, in line with the commitment in the Transforming for a digital future: 2022 to 2025 roadmap for digital and data,” said Alex Burghart, a Cabinet Office minister with responsibility for the CDDO and sister agency the Government Digital Service – which developed One Login.
The minister added that work is also “on track” to ensure that “at least 145” of government’s most important services have adopted the login tool by the end of the 2024/25 fiscal year, which marks the conclusion of the period covered by the digital and data roadmap.
“We are working closely with departments to identify further services for onboarding as part of the programme’s longer-term roadmap beyond March 2025,” he said.
Burghart, who was answering a series of written parliamentary questions from shadow Cabinet Office minister Jonathan Ashworth, said that concurrent work is also taking place to ensure users are of the platform are adequately supported.
“The GOV.UK One Login programme has recently expanded its customer support offering with the launch of a contact centre to provide real-time multi-channel assistance to users,” he said. “Alongside this, One Login will shortly roll out an enhanced technical service desk to provide round-the-clock monitoring and technical support. Both of these initiatives will be scaled up over time as more government services and users onboard to GOV.UK One Login.”
Plans for One Login were first revealed in 2020 and, once it has been fully implemented, it is intended to provide a single, cohesive replacement for an existing patchwork of 191 separate accounts systems used by agencies, incorporating 44 different login methods.
