News of the demise of Identity Assurance for businesses and agents would appear to have come as a welcome surprise to agents. Can this significant U-turn really be true? Steve Checkley investigates.
It always seemed to be the case that Government projects took eons to come to fruition. This doesn’t appear to be the case with Identity Assurance, which has been barreling along at a rate of knots and has now been launched as GOV.UK Verify.
Despite a recent article on the BBC News website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news), it’s long been my concern that IDA is a far-reaching concept that hasn’t been publicised particularly well by the government. Through its executive channels, such as HMRC and DVLA, individuals (or citizens in Government-speak) will find themselves having to confirm their identities whenever they wish to transact with a Government service.
But what of businesses and agents? Weren’t these groups also to be caught under IDA? Yes is the short answer – but perhaps not for a while.
I recently read an article saying that IDA for businesses and agents had been cancelled. This didn’t quite tally with my understanding of the matter and so I took things up with HMRC and the Cabinet Office directly.
It would transpire that the findings of the research undertaken by the Cabinet Office were that IDA for businesses and agents is a complex matter and one central solution as was planned is not able to suit all Government departments.
Carefully reading into this, each government department is now largely free to determine how IDA is to be implemented for businesses and agents, under a set of guidance provided by Government Digital Services. After querying the matter further, HMRC would appear to still have a long-term intention to migrate away from the Government Gateway and into a system of robust identity management for organisations and agents.
So it would appear that the spectre of IDA for businesses and agents may yet hang around but until the concept is developed to a state that is suitable for all parties concerned (business, agents, professional bodies, HMRC and software developers), HMRC will continue to rely upon the Government Gateway.
To find out more on GOV.UK Verify, visit https://identityassurance.blog.gov.uk.
This article is taken from “Accounting Practice” the ICPA quarterly magazine. Dedicated to supporting and promoting the needs of the general practitioner. You can find us at www.icpa.org.uk or email info@icpa.org.uk or by phone on 0800-074-2896https://www.icpa.org.uk/