NAO investigation concludes that Verify has failed to hit a single target

GDS flagship identity verification programme over-optimistic and failed to set clear objectives, claims NAO report

The National Audit Office has released a damning report into the Government Digital Services (GDS) flagship Verify identity verification programme, claiming that it has failed to hit a single target despite costing £212 million.

The report, released today [PDF], indicates that it has just 3.6 million users as of February 2019, against a target by 2020 of 25 million; and, has just 19 government services currently using it, against a target of 46 by March last year, with the Universal Credit benefits programme the biggest driver of Verify usage.

Equally damning, perhaps, is that GDS reports a verification success rate of 48 per cent as of February 2019, against a 2015 forecast of 90 per cent.

"The verification success rate measures the proportion of people who succeed in signing up for Verify in a single attempt out of all those who try. These people have had their identities successfully confirmed by a commercial identity provider," the report explains.

It continues: "Some failures to sign up are not counted as part of this measure, such as the number of people dropping out before they finish their applications. The verification success rate also does not indicate whether people can actually access and use the government services they want after being successfully verified."

And even Verify's expected benefits, downgraded from £873 million for the four-year period between 2016 and 2020 to £217 million, cannot be verified, according to the NAO.

GDS claims that the figure for benefits represents savings that government departments have or will make by using Verify compared to other methods. "We have not been able to replicate or validate GDS's estimated benefits on the evidence made available to us," claims the NAO.

As a result of this litany of failure, GDS failed to achieve its goal of becoming self-funding by March 2018, partly because of the largely unfulfilled expectation that costs would fall as numbers signing-up increased. Furthermore, only HMRC has paid the Cabinet Office and GDS for the Verify service, despite being invoiced for it.

However, GDS has reduced the prices it will pay to providers for new sign-ups, which was applied for the period of October 2018 to March 2020. GDS now claims that Verify will be "cost neutral" by April 2020.

Part of the problem that has undermined Verify adoption is the bureaucratic process required to sign-up, especially when other more straightforward processes exist. In order to use Verify, people must first pick from a list of ‘identity providers' to verify their identities.

This involves the presentation of a range of evidence, including paper documentation. Once their identities are verified, people are then provided with a Verify login to access the online services they need.

Verify, concluded the NAO report, is "an example of many of the failings in major programmes that we often see, including optimism bias and a failure to set clear objectives.

"Even in the context of GDS's redefined objectives for the programme, it is difficult to conclude that successive decisions to continue with Verify have been sufficiently justified."