Civil service officials last week attempted to quell the second uproar of the year from private sector digital ID app providers in a behind-closed-doors meeting, while this week (Monday 13 October) new technology secretary Liz Kendall attempted to face down MPs from all parties in a House of Commons debate as they expressed their concerns and protestations at the plans.
Kendall was correct when she told MPs: “There is a lot of misinformation out there about this proposal.” But she did not acknowledge that any misinformation was largely a result of the government’s poor communication around the original announcement.
As fintech industry body Innovate Finance – a supporter of digital identity – put it: “The reaction, frankly, has been to focus on the worst-case scenario – ‘compulsory digital ID’ is being framed as an erosion of civil liberties, a gateway to mass surveillance, and a tool of digital exclusion. It’s all fear and no finesse.”
Based on discussions with industry insiders, however, it may in fact be the case that Starmer’s mandatory national digital ID scheme will prove to be neither mandatory nor national.
However, the language used in the Commons by Kendall was subtly different. She talked about “making ID checks both mandatory and digital for all employers”. Her speech tried to focus on the wider benefits of digital identity, citing the need to modernise public services and make them easier to access in a digital age.
Years from now, having your ID on your phone will feel like second nature, putting more power directly into people’s hands and giving them more control over how they interact with government services. That is worth striving for Liz Kendall, technology secretary
“Years from now, when we look back, I believe that having your ID on your phone will feel like second nature, putting more power directly into people’s hands and giving them more control over how they interact with government and the whole range of services. That is something worth striving for,” she said.
As shadow technology secretary Julia Lopez pointed out, the previous Conservative government had already introduced mandatory right-to-work checks for employers and launched a mechanism whereby a digital identity app can be used, voluntarily, to prove an individual’s right to work in the UK. Most UK citizens will have had to prove their right to work (RTW) using physical documents such as a passport.
Any apps used as part of RTW checks have to be approved through the government-backed Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework (DIATF), which was given a statutory basis through the Data (Use & Access) Act (DUA), which received Royal Assent in June.
Run by the Office for Digital Identities and Attributes (OfDIA), nearly 50 third-party identity service providers (IDSPs) have received approval under DIATF for their apps to be used for RTW and other statutory government checks, such as age verification or registering as a company director.
Kendall confirmed to MPs that the government will bring legislation during this Parliament – so, before 2029 – for “making ID checks mandatory and digital”. She said there will not be a central database of digital identities, and there will be no sanction or penalty for people if they do not have a digital ID – only for employers that do not conduct RTW checks.
The only legal change the government has proposed so far is that RTW checks will have to be conducted digitally. There will be a government digital identity app that people can use to digitally prove their right to work, but the question remains: will they be compelled to use the government app, or will any app from a DIATF-approved IDSP be acceptable?
The first attempt came after the announcement of the Gov.uk Wallet and its proposed use for age verification – for example, when buying alcohol or accessing age-restricted online services. Many IDSPs specialise in age verification and have spent millions of pounds developing, testing and proving their capability to determine someone’s age using facial verification through a smartphone app.
So, when Starmer announced that the government would be further treading on the IDSPs’ turf, there was understandable outrage.
At the meeting last week, civil service officials outlined how Starmer’s plans would be brought to fruition.
IDSPs were told that OfDIA chief executive Hannah Rutter would be moving into a new role, leading development of the policy and overseeing a consultation planned for early 2026. They heard that Rutter would be replaced at OfDIA by John Peart, who is seen by suppliers as supportive of the private sector’s role. When asked by Computer Weekly, DSIT would not confirm or deny the appointments.
The consultation process – calling for, and responding to, submissions – is likely to take about a year. Draft legislation would then be put before Parliament in 2027, with the new government digital ID scheme likely to be in place by mid-2028, about a year before the next general election.
The legislative process will not be easy. As David Crack, chair of industry body the Association of Digital Verification Professionals, told Computer Weekly, many Labour MPs are opposed to the concept of mandatory digital identity, opposition parties are lining up against it, and because the policy was not included in Labour’s manifesto, the House of Lords may find it constitutionally acceptable to delay or even deny its approval. If millions of voters are against the proposals too, it’s not a policy likely to be enacted in a general election year.
“There is a plan – for a plan for a national ID scheme – but not an [actual] plan. Realpolitik will prevail,” said Crack.
During the meeting with IDSPs, DSIT officials reiterated that measures introduced by the DUA Act will still be implemented.
Significantly, this includes the launch of an “information gateway” which will allow IDSPs to access government-held data as part of the process of confirming people’s identities digitally – for example, passport or driving licence checks – greatly expanding the range of public data that non-government apps can use as credentials to prove that app users are who they say they are.
Well before the likely launch of a government digital ID scheme in 2028, therefore, there will already be a wide variety of digital identity apps and services on the market and already in use by people choosing voluntarily to prove their right to work digitally.
If use of those apps numbers in the millions by 2028, will legislation really force them to move to a government-developed app instead?
Crack said DSIT officials told suppliers they are open to ideas on how to implement mandatory digital RTW checks. “Note, mandatory RTW checks, but not necessarily a mandatory digital ID scheme,” he said. Crack believes that “government is listening”.
Others in the industry are less convinced. “The truth is out – a confirmation that the government made a policy decision to go ahead and do this stuff themselves. We are told the DUA Act will be continued, but my sense is that they see the private sector as interim or peripheral,” said one supplier executive, who asked to remain anonymous.
However, stakeholders across the digital identity sector agree on two things.
First, that Starmer’s announcement has propelled digital identity into a topic for national debate – something even the most worried suppliers have welcomed.
And second, that the manner of Starmer’s announcement – linking digital ID to tackling illegal immigration – means the public will need to be educated on what digital identity really means.
Dispelling the myths
With nearly three million signatories, the petition against the government proposal is one of the largest such online protests, but the statement people sign up to support says, “We demand that the UK government immediately commits to not introducing a digital ID card”.
Furthermore, critics have lined up to attack the use of a centralised government database – but Kendall confirmed there is no such plan, there never was, and as anybody familiar with how digital identity works would explain, the technology relies on the secure sharing of credentials, not large amounts of personal data or referencing an identity database.
For example, an age verification app simply confirms that the holder is over 18 when buying alcohol. It shares a digital credential saying “yes” when asked, “Is this person over 18?” – the app does not need to identify the person to the retailer in any way.
Lurid newspaper headlines have warned of US tech companies getting their hands on UK citizens’ personal data, with particular fears over the involvement of Palantir, the controversial data integration supplier that works closely with US military and intelligence services, as well as the NHS. One MP in the Commons debate warned of “writing Fujitsu a blank cheque” – a reference to the shamed IT services supplier that developed the Horizon system at the heart of the Post Office scandal.
However, Kendall confirmed that the government app will be developed in-house, by the Government Digital Service – there are no plans to award a contract to a single supplier to develop the digital ID software from scratch.
The software will be a continuation of existing developments – notably, Gov.uk One Login, the digital identity system that will become the standard way to log in to online public services and is already in use by many government websites.
It’s likely that the digital ID system will use the Gov.uk Wallet to store digital credentials, provided by the government, that prove the holder is who they say they are and that they have the right to work in the UK – much the same as the existing private sector apps that are used for the same purpose today.
By the time any legislation is passed, the amount of further development needed for One Login and the digital wallet is likely to be comparatively minimal – and certainly not require a huge new software development project.
DSIT will need to be far more transparent about how it has solved those problems before public trust in the system can be established.
Industry trade association TechUK has called on the government to help address the concerns its announcement has provoked, and to work together to explain the benefits that digital identity can offer the public, citing the “uncertainty for citizens and the private sector alike” that came as a result of Starmer’s announcement.
[Keir Starmer’s announcement] inappropriately positions digital ID as a silver bullet for a multifaceted and nuanced issue, rather than focusing on the benefits that digital ID can actually deliver, meaning its broader benefits are currently missing from the current political narrative TechUK report
“The announcement primarily centred on immigration enforcement, with government linking digital ID to the reduction of illegal working – and without acknowledgement that digital ID solutions, provided under the DIATF, were already being used for this purpose,” said TechUK, in a new report, Digital ID & the UK: Empowering citizens, enabling growth.
“It inappropriately positions digital ID as a silver bullet for a multifaceted and nuanced issue, rather than focusing on the benefits that digital ID can actually deliver, meaning its broader benefits are currently missing from the current political narrative.”
The report added: “Government must work alongside the digital ID sector, civil society, citizens, and other key stakeholders to build public trust, support innovation, and drive adoption. Indeed, the digital ID sector is prepared for a sustained period of engagement, where long-term decisions on digital ID infrastructure, governance, and market design will need to be carefully considered. Clearer communication around future plans is imperative for citizens and the digital ID sector alike.”
There is a path that Starmer and his government could follow, to back away from a badly received proposal and appear to be listening to public concerns, which would promote digital identity as the social and economic benefit it has proved to be in numerous other countries.
It would involve rescinding plans for a “national, mandatory” scheme, in favour of offering the public a wide choice of digital ID apps – both private sector and government-developed – that will enable a mandatory digital right-to-work check to be implemented nationwide. Who knows, maybe it might even have an impact on immigration?
But industry, the public and sceptical MPs alike can only wait and see whether Starmer is politically savvy enough to grasp the opportunity to turn a bad proposal into good policy.
Analysis from GlobalData is forecasting that fixed wireless access (FWA) service revenue in Hong Kong is expected to increase at a “healthy” compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.6% between 2025 and 2030.
The latest Hong Kong Total Fixed Communications Forecast set out to quantify current and future demand and spending on mobile services for the special administrative region of China. It noted that growth was being driven by Hong Kong’s extensive 5G network coverage and could also be attributed to local operators’ efforts to expand FWA services and position it as an alternative to traditional fibre broadband services for both residential and commercial sectors, meeting growing demand for high-speed connectivity in areas where extending fibre lines is challenging.
“High-density urban and suburban centres of Hong Kong create a strong business case for FWA services due to their cost-effective and rapid deployments without the complex infrastructure and civil work required for extending fibre-optic lines to such locations,” said Neha Misra, senior analyst at GlobalData.
“Competitive, feature-rich plans from the operators will also help drive its adoption over the forecast period. For instance, HKBN’s 5G Home Broadband Plan provides unlimited 5G broadband data (subject to a 300GB with a fair-usage policy) for HKD118 per month on a 24-month contract, along with a seven-day trial guarantee. The plan also includes a waiver of the HKD28 monthly administration fee and complimentary access to the basic HomeShield security plan.”
In addition to HKBN, the study noted that operators such as 3 Hong Kong and HKT are also using their extensive 5G networks to offer home broadband services, particularly in areas with limited fibre infrastructure. It cited HKT as recently having successfully deployed mmWave-based FWA to deliver ultra-high-speed internet to rural areas and outlying islands.
“Growing demand for FWA provides operators a strong revenue opportunity by expanding home and SME broadband without the high capital intensity of fibre roll-out,” Misra added. “By leveraging nationwide 5G coverage, introducing competitively priced service plans and bundling digital home services, operators can unlock higher ARPU [average revenue per user], accelerate market penetration in underserved areas and diversify beyond traditional revenues.”
GlobalData believes the Hong Kong government’s smart city initiatives will also open new opportunities for FWA, especially 5G FWA, which can deliver high-speed internet to power applications such as the digital economy, digital governance and e-health services, while supporting the city’s dense urban environment and digital transformation goals under the Smart City Blueprint 2.0.
The original blueprint was set out in December 2017, outlining 76 initiatives under six smart areas, namely Smart Mobility, Smart Living, Smart Environment, Smart People, Smart Government and Smart Economy. Blueprint 2.0 puts forth more than 130 initiatives that continue to enhance and expand existing city management measures and services. The new initiatives aim to bring benefits and convenience to the public so that residents can better perceive the benefits of smart city innovation and technology.
And thanks to a mention in Dan Brown’s new novel, The Secret of Secrets, the festival has gained even more global recognition. Just a few weeks after the release of Brown’s new bestseller set in contemporary Prague, viewers were able to see for themselves what drew the popular writer to the festival, which is the largest Czech and Central European showcase of digital art. In one passage, the Signal Festival has a cameo appearance when the novel’s protagonist recalls attending an event at the 2024 edition.
“We’re happy about it,” festival director Martin Pošta says about the mention. “It’s a kind of recognition.” Not that the event needed promotion, even in one of the most anticipated novels of recent years. The organizers have yet to share the number of visitors to the festival this year, but the four-day event typically attracts half a million visitors.
On the final day, there was a long queue in front of the monumental installation Tristan’s Ascension by American video art pioneer Bill Viola before it opened for the evening, even though it was a ticketed event. In the Church of St. Salvator in the Convent of St. Agnes, visitors could watch a Christ-like figure rise upwards, streams of water defying gravity along with him, all projected on a huge screen.
The festival premiere took place on the Vltava River near the Dvořák Embankment. Taiwan’s Peppercorns Interactive Media Art presented a projection on a cloud of mist called Tzolk’in Light. While creators of other light installations have to deal with the challenges of buildings—their irregular surfaces, decorative details, and awkward cornices—projecting onto water droplets is a challenge of a different kind with artists having to give up control over the resulting image. The shape and depth of the Peppercorns’ work depended on the wind at any given moment, which determined how much of the scene was revealed to viewers and how much simply blown away. The reward, however, was an extraordinary 3D spectacle reminiscent of a hologram—something that can’t be achieved with video projections on static and flat buildings.
Another premiere event was a projection on the tower of the Old Town Hall, created for the festival by the Italian studio mammasONica. It transformed the 230-foot structure into a kaleidoscope of blue, green, red, and white surfaces. A short distance away, on Republic Square, Peppercorns had another installation. On a circular LED installation, they projected a work entitled Between Mountains and Seas, which recounted the history of Taiwan.
Software development is associated with the idea of not reinventing the wheel, which means developers often select components or software libraries with pre-built functionality, rather than write code to achieve the same result.
There are many benefits of this approach. For example, a software component that is widely deployed is likely to have undergone extensive testing and debugging. It is considered tried and trusted, mature technology, unlike brand-new code, which has not been thoroughly debugged and may inadvertently introduce unknown cyber security issues into the business.
The Lego analogy is often used to describe how these components can be put together to build enterprise applications. Developers can draw on functionality made available through application programming interfaces (APIs), which provide programmatic access to software libraries and components.
Increasingly, in the age of data-driven applications and greater use of artificial intelligence (AI), API access to data sources is another Lego brick that developers can use to create new software applications. And just as is the case with a set of old-school Lego bricks, constructing the application from the numerous software components available is left to the creativity of the software developer.
A Lego template for application development
To take the Lego analogy a bit further, there are instructions, templates and pathways developers can be encouraged to follow to build enterprise software that complies with corporate policies.
A developer self-service platform provides a way for organisations to offer their developers almost pre-authorised assets, artefacts and tools that they can use to develop code Roy Illsley, Omdia
Roy Illsley, chief analyst, IT operations, at Omdia, defines an internal developer platform (IDP) as a developer self-service portal to access the tools and environments that the IT strategy has defined the organisation should standardise on. “A developer self-service platform provides a way for organisations to offer their developers almost pre-authorised assets, artefacts and tools that they can use to develop code,” he says.
The basic idea is to provide a governance framework with a suite of compliant tools. Bola Rotibi, chief of enterprise research at CCS Insight, says: “A developer self-service platform is really about trying to get a governance path.”
Rotibi regards the platform as “a golden path”, which provides developers who are not as skilled as more experienced colleagues a way to fast-track their work within a governance structure that allows them a certain degree of flexibility and creativity.
As to why offering flexibility to developers is an important consideration falls under the umbrella of developer experience and productivity. SnapLogic effectively provides modern middleware. It is used in digital transformation projects to connect disparate systems, and is now being repositioned for the age of agentic AI.
SnapLogic’s chief technology officer, Jeremiah Stone, says quite a few of the companies it has spoken to that identify as leaders in business transformation regard a developer portal offering self-service as something that goes hand-in-hand with digital infrastructure and AI-powered initiatives.
SnapLogic’s platform offers API management and service management, which manages the lifecycle of services, version control and documentation through a developer portal called the Dev Hub.
Stone says the capabilities of this platform extend from software developers to business technologists, and now AI users, who, he says, may be looking for a Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoint.
Such know-how captured in a self-service developer portal enables users – whether they are software developers, or business users using low-code or no-code tooling – to connect AI with existing enterprise IT systems.
Enter Backstage
One platform that seems to have captured the minds of the developer community when it comes to developer self-service is Backstage. Having begun life internally at audio streaming site Spotify, Backstage is now an open source project managed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).
While many teams that implemented Backstage assumed that it would be an easy, free addition to their DevOps practices, that isn’t always the case. Backstage can be complex and requires engineering expertise to assemble, build and deploy Christopher Condo and Lauren Alexander, Forrester
Pia Nilsson, senior director of engineering at the streaming service, says: “At Spotify, we’ve learned that enabling developer self-service begins with standardisation. Traditional centralised processes create bottlenecks, but complete decentralisation can lead to chaos. The key is finding the middle ground – standardisation through design, where automation and clear workflows replace manual oversight.”
Used by two million developers, Backstage is an open source framework for building internal developer portals. Nilsson says Backstage provides a single, consistent entry point for all development activities – tools, services, documentation and data. She says this means “developers can move quickly while staying aligned with organisational standards”.
Nilsson points out that standardising the fleet of components that comprise an enterprise technology stack is sometimes regarded as a large migration effort, moving everyone onto a single version or consolidating products into one. However, she says: “While that’s a critical part of standardising the fleet, it’s even more important to figure out the intrinsic motivator for the organisation to keep it streamlined and learn to ‘self-heal’ tech fragmentation.”
According to Nilsson, this is why it is important to integrate all in-house-built tools, as well as all the developer tools the business has purchased, in the same IDP. Doing so, she notes, makes it very easy to spot duplication. “Engineers will only use what they enjoy using, and we usually enjoy using the stuff we built ourselves because it’s exactly what we need,” she says.
The fact that Backstage is a framework is something IT leaders need to consider. In a recent blog post, Forrester analysts Christopher Condo and Lauren Alexander warned that most IDPs are frameworks that require assembly: “While many teams that implemented Backstage assumed that it would be an easy, free addition to their DevOps practices, that isn’t always the case. Backstage can be complex and requires engineering expertise to assemble, build and deploy.”
However, Forrester also notes that commercial IDP options are now available that include an orchestration layer on top of Backstage. These offer another option that may be a better fit for some organisations.
AI in an IDP
As well as the assembly organisations will need to carry out if they do not buy a commercial IDP, AI is revolutionising software development, and its impact needs to be taken into account in any decisions made around developer self-service and IDP.
Spotify’s Nilsson believes it is important for IT leaders to figure out how to support AI tooling usage in the most impactful way for their company.
“Today, there is both a risk to not leveraging enough AI tools or having it very unevenly spread across the company, as well as the risk that some teams give in to the vibes and release low-quality code to production,” she says.
According to Nilsson, this is why the IT team responsible for the IDP needs to drive up the adoption of these tools and evaluate the impact over time. “At Spotify, we drive broad AI adoption through education and hack weeks, which we promote through our product Skill Exchange. We also help engineers use context-aware agentic tools,” she adds.
Looking ahead
In terms of AI tooling, an example of how developer self-service could evolve is the direction of travel SAP looks to be taking with its Joule AI copilot tool.
When structure, automation and visibility are built into the developer experience, you replace bottlenecks with flow and create an environment where teams can innovate quickly, confidently and responsibly Pia Nilsson, Spotify
CCS Insights’ Rotibi believes the trend to integrate AI into developer tools and platforms is an area of opportunity for developer self-service platforms. Among the interesting topics Rotibi saw at the recent SAP TechEd conference in Berlin was the use of AI in SAP Joule.
SAP announced new AI assistants in Joule, which it said are able to coordinate multiple agents across workflows, departments and applications. According to SAP, these assistants plan, initiate and complete complex tasks spanning finance, supply chain, HR and beyond.
“SAP Joule is an AI interface. It’s a bit more than just a chatbot. It is also a workbench,” says Rotibi. Given that Joule has access to the SAP product suite, she notes that, as well as providing access, Joule understands the products. “It knows all the features and functions SAP has worked on, and, behind the scenes, uses the best data model to get the data points the user wants,” she says.
Recognising that enterprise software developers will want to build their own applications and create their own integration between different pieces of software, she says SAP Joule effectively plays the role of a developer self-service portal for the SAP product suite.
Besides what comes next with AI-powered functionality, there are numerous benefits in offering developer self-service to improve the overall developer experience, but there needs to be structure and standards.
Nilsson says: “When structure, automation and visibility are built into the developer experience, you replace bottlenecks with flow and create an environment where teams can innovate quickly, confidently and responsibly.”
Sports1 week ago
Entertainment1 week ago
Politics1 week ago
Tech6 days ago
Politics1 week ago
Fashion1 week ago
Tech23 hours ago