Group advising and scrutinising issues of data protection and accessibility for digital ID tool has been disbanded, but it is understood a body with a wider remit will be created
Government has closed the external advisory group created to provide scrutiny and advice to the One Login programme on issues of privacy, inclusion and accessibility, PublicTechnology can reveal.
The One Login Inclusion and Privacy Advisory Group (OLIPAG) has been disbanded, according to a recent tweak made to the group’s GOV.UK profile page. The site adds that the group previously “advised the Government Digital Service’s GOV.UK One Login programme on inclusion, privacy, data usage, equality and digital identity”.
“OLIPAG was independent from government and members were able to express their views freely,” the page says. “The GOV.UK One Login programme took the advice of OLIPAG into consideration.”
OLIPAG was created in 2023 via the merger of two bodies that previously operated in a similar capacity: the Privacy and Consumer Advisory Group; and the Privacy and Inclusion Advisory Forum. The expanded group featured 20 members, largely from academia and civil society, and representing groups including Citizens Advice, Age UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office, Privacy International, and Big Brother Watch.
Having met for the first time in November 2023, online records suggest that the group met three further times between February and May 2024 but has not convened in the past nine months.
It is understood that the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology – which now houses GDS – intends to replace OLIPAG in due course with an advisory group fulfilling a wider remit than simply the One Login programme.
A spokesperson for the department said: “As we put technology to work for public services and target £45bn in productivity savings, we will be more rigorous in engaging with industry than ever before – that’s why we invited dozens of journalists and industry representatives into our offices last month to see our latest work in practice. In setting out how our department will operate as the digital centre of government, we committed to continually speaking to civil society groups and communities. More details on this will be announced soon.”
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The group’s initial meeting in 2023 was attended by eight members and 14 GDS employees, who provided group members with a presentation on the One Login project’s “user segmentation work… coverage of the programme [and an] estimate how many people in the UK population can use [One Login] overall”.
Issues raised by members included a concern that “any users may seem to be ‘online’ but their families may have set them up and users are really not online” and that “many older people don’t always have more than the basic technical skills… and can often be concerned about putting personal information”, according to the minutes of the meeting.
OLIPAG was originally co-chaired by Edgar Whitley from the London School of Economics and Louise Bennett from the Digital Policy Alliance. This duo remained part of the board but was subsequently replaced as co-chairs by and Bryn Robinson-Morgan from digital ID advisory firm Moresburg and Elizabeth Anderson, also from the Digital Poverty Alliance.
At the time of its closure, other members included: Margaret Ford, Consult Hyperion; Sam Smith, Med Confidential; Colin Griffiths, Citizens Advice; Tom Fisher, Privacy International; Lizzie Coles-Kemp, Royal Holloway, University of London; Mariano delli Santi, Open Rights Group; Silkie Carlo, Big Brother Watch; Gavin Freeguard, Open Data Institute; Chris Pounder, Amberhawk; Mark Durkee, Centre for Data Ethics; Sital Mistry-Lee, Good Things Foundation; Nadine Trout, Rural Services Network; Brendan Shepherd, Unlock; Swee Leng Harris, King’s College London; Viv Adams, Information Commissioner’s Office; and Christopher Brooks, Age UK.
One Login has been implemented by 50 individual government services, and more than four million people have created an account. The GDS-developed sign-in tool is intended to provide a single, ubiquitous replacement for what was previously a patchwork of almost 200 separate account systems used across government.
