Department agrees new engagement for an initial period of two years, providing continued support for its ID and access tool, but PublicTechnology understands One Login remains in its future plans
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has retained until at least 2027 its existing commercial partner for customer identity and login services – but it is understood the organisation still intends to incorporate into its systems the new cross-government One Login platform.
Defra began working with digital ID and access specialist Condatis in late 2020 – shortly before work on delivering One Login officially began. Since then, the tech company has supported the environment department in building and deploying what is described in newly published commercial documents as “Defra’s Common Platform for Customer Identity and Access Management”.
The text of the latest contract between the two parties adds that the platform “provides businesses and citizens with seamless, secure and efficient digital experience; through the customer identity product, it ensures that users can access all Defra services with a single, unified login”.
While it has deployed its own cross-department login system, in a digital strategy published in late 2023, Defra indicated that “by 2025 we will have delivered… an identity management platform for all Defra customers, linked to One Login for government”.
Although the 2025 deadline will not be met, PublicTechnology understands that Defra does still intend to deploy One Login and has begun work on to integrate One Login with the incumbent Condatis-based platform. Services covered by the latest contract between the department and the digital ID firm – which runs for an initial two-year period beginning on 1 September – will include upgrades and tweaks intended to pave the way for the integration of One Login, it is understood.
It is not clear how the two login systems will interact, or the role each will ultimately play in the sign-in process used by citizens to access Defra services.
In the meantime, the department’s latest commercial deal – which provides the option of an additional year’s extension, which would take its end date to 31 August 2028 – is valued at almost £6m.
One Login is mentioned in the contract, on a long list of “roadmap items” of possible future developments that the document states “for illustration only and shouldn’t be referred to for an accurate portrayal of roadmap or contract deliverables”.
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Alongside One Login, other potential ambitions listed on the indicative roadmap include Welsh language options, online journeys for non-UK users, verification of businesses, configurable user journeys, integration with Defra’s online forms, and API-based sign-in options.
The contract states that, in the coming months, core services provided by Condatis will include “continual improvement and enhancement… through ongoing releases and improvements to the existing service”.
The supplier will be expected to “develop customer identity solutions based on priorities set out in the product roadmap and backlog” and to deliver systems that “provide scalable, flexible and enhanced functionality for reuse by multiple Defra consuming services – both existing and future consuming services”.
The agreement also provides for the possibility of creating “one place to store customer information, enabling Defra to achieve a single view of the customer” – although notes that this element “is still to be confirmed”.
Defra also wishes to “enable capture of customer data in [a] consistent format, improving the ability to reuse data across Defra” and “automate processes and services, where possible”.
Other deliverables set out in the contract include “allowing for existing inefficient services to be decommissioned” and undertaking work to “streamline processes and increase interoperability, [and] reduce complexity and operational/delivery risk”.
Defra’s extension of arrangements for its incumbent sign-in platform comes shortly after the formal delivery date for the One Login programme was reset from 2025 to 2028.
But the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has claimed that this should not be considered as a delay. Rather, the coming three years of work will see additional services brought in scope of the programme – and should be seen as an endorsement of progress so far, the department said.
The recent annual report reviewing the status of the Government Major Project Portfolio provided some support for DSIT’s characterisation of progress and expansion – but also identified delays and ongoing risks to successful delivery.
