[lobsang]

The identity side has allways been a problem (P)politically and technically.

I think the original GDS was completely correct in basically forcing services not to have them, they are unnecessary for almost/all transactional inerteractions - where they are useful is for things with long term, cosistent interactions i.e. where theres an actual relationship, such as benefits or tax - unfortunatly HMRC and DWP both want to "own" the relationship as individual departments (or even benefits) rather than as a part of the government, and the UK is adverse to anything that looks like a national identity system (ignoring the fact we already have national insurance numbers for everyone(?), passport numbers, etc.)

Where I think the loss of critical thinking bites the most though are the small things:

- cookie banner on gov.uk

- my DVLA password, had to have numbers etc (despite password compostion rules not been a recommeneded best practice for almost 10 years [thanks NIST / GCHQ])

- forms are now so simple due to the mantra of "only ask one thing at a time" that you lose all context as you now have a page for "name", "date of birth" etc. instead of one page for "personal details"