After a quarter century in operation and almost a decade on from the initial commencement of a decommissioning process, the HMRC IT system seemingly now has an updated end date
A minister has indicated that the long-standing Government Gateway login platform will be ready to be finally and fully phased out by 2029 – 13 years after a decommissioning process for the technology was first kicked off.
The system – along with almost 200 other discrete online accounts currently used across departments – is in the process of being replaced by the incoming GOV.UK One Login, which is intended to provide a single unified government tool through which citizens can prove their identity and access public services.
One Login was originally slated to be more-or-less ubiquitously rolled out across Whitehall by 2025, with Government Gateway having begun the lengthy migration process in early 2024.
But, in September of last year, PublicTechnology reported that HMRC was seeking to extend agreements with credit-reference specialists to help ensure Government Gateway could continue to verify the identity of users – with a multi-year deal planned to commence in 2026.
At that point, it was understood that the timeline for decommissioning Government Gateway remained flexible with no firm shut-off date currently in place.
Nine months on, and a minister has publicly put forward a target that all services currently reliant on Gateway – which has registered 50 million users during its lifespan – will be successfully switched over to One Login by the time of the next general election, which is due in 2029.
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In response to a question from fellow Labour MP Chi Onwurah concerning when government “plans to complete the integration of the Government Gateway with the GOV.UK One Login system”, artificial intelligence and digital government minister Feryal Clark added that “Government Gateway is a separate, existing authentication and identity service for cross-government digital services and is managed by HMRC [and] here are no plans to integrate Government Gateway with GOV.UK One Login”.
“But, in time, services that use Government Gateway will move over to using GOV.UK One Login instead,” Clark added. “GOV.UK One Login is the government’s sign-in and identity verification solution, enabling users to create an account, log in, and prove their identity to access government services. Our plan is to onboard all central government services during this parliament, including those currently accessed through Government Gateway.”
Having first gone live in 2001, Government Gateway was originally hoped to be replaced by the GOV.UK Verify identity-authentication system, launched by the Government Digital Service in 2016. Later the same year, a supplier was appointed to lead the decommissioning process for the Gateway system.
However, HMRC – one of government’s largest departments – was one of a number of agencies and services that chose not to adopt the much-maligned Verify, and opted to continue using the incumbent Gateway system.
If the tax department – and other agencies that still use Government Gateway – meet the minister’s stated target of completing migration of all services by 2029, then the outgoing system will finally be ready to switch off for good after almost three decades in operation.
One Login has recently been subject to concerns about its security credentials, not least because the system has lost the formal government digital identity trustmark awarded by GDS’s own parent organisation: the Department for Science, innovation and Technology.
