A recent Computer Weekly article posed a question that has hung over UK government technology for decades: is digital identity a dystopian nightmare or the route to modernised public services?
The article invoked the Rashomon Effect – the idea that we’re all watching the same policy from different angles and nobody can agree on what’s actually happening.
It was right. But there’s a way to stop arguing about the ending and start writing it with evidence. Trial digital identity somewhere first, applying the government’s mantra of “test and learn”.
Not in a Whitehall sandbox. Not in a PowerPoint simulation. In a real place, with real people, where you can measure what happens and, crucially, what doesn’t.
It’s a fine ambition. But the consultation also revealed a familiar pattern – policy designed in Westminster, debated in the abstract, and destined to be rolled out nationally before anyone knows whether it works.
The Isle of Wight’s value as a policy testbed extends well beyond digital identity, although digital ID makes for the most compelling starting point precisely because it is so contested
We’ve been here before. Gov.uk Verify launched in 2013 as the answer to digital identity. It was buried a few years later having consumed £220m and delivered precious little. The political scars from that failure, and from Tony Blair’s ID card debacle before it, are exactly why three million people signed a petition against the current proposals before the consultation even opened.
The government says it has learned. The app will be built in-house by the Government Digital Service. There will be no central database. The National Cyber Security Centre will be involved from the start. The legislation will enshrine its voluntary nature. These are sensible commitments. But they’re still promises, not proof.
What if there were a way to turn those promises into evidence?
A controlled environment for a contested policy
The Isle of Wight provides an ideal controlled environment. It functions as a naturally closed system. It is surrounded by water, connected to the mainland by three ferry gateways where every person, vehicle, and item of freight can be tracked. It has one local authority, a defined NHS footprint, and a population of 140,000 – large enough to be statistically meaningful, small enough to manage.
For a policy as sensitive as digital identity, this matters enormously.
The critics worry about function creep, about a surveillance infrastructure being built by stealth, about data leaking to law enforcement or foreign tech companies. The supporters argue it will save billions and transform public services. Both sides are speculating, because neither has evidence. A controlled trial on the island would generate that evidence for the first time.
It would also help clarify the role of private and public sectors. There’s a growing marketplace of digital identity service providers certified against the government’s statutory digital verification services trust framework. Some providers already offer high assurance services such as digital right to work checks. Working through the question of what the public sector should do and what the private sector should do will be key to avoiding the problems of earlier failed initiatives like Gov.uk Verify.
Imagine a voluntary digital ID pilot on the Isle of Wight. Residents who opt in could choose from a range of certified digital ID providers, including the Gov.uk Wallet prototype, to access local health services through the Island’s NHS Trust, renew ferry-related travel passes, verify their identity for benefits, or interact with the council.
Every transaction would be measurable. Adoption rates, drop-off points, accessibility barriers, security incidents, public sentiment, all captured in a bounded environment where the data isn’t contaminated by a thousand confounding variables.
If it works, the government has proof, not rhetoric, to take to the sceptics. If it doesn’t, it has failed cheaply and learned before committing the nation to a multibillion-pound programme.
More than digital ID
This is not just about one application. The Isle of Wight’s value as a policy testbed extends well beyond digital identity, although digital ID makes for the most compelling starting point precisely because it is so contested.
The island’s demographics are roughly 15 years ahead of the UK average on the ageing curve. What happens there with healthcare, social care, and pension-age employment is a preview of what the rest of Britain will face by 2040. The island already carries an invisible surcharge on the cost of living or an “island tax” driven by ferry costs that inflates the price of everything from groceries to building materials, making it an ideal environment for trialling cost-of-living interventions, even more so in the light of the war in Iran.
A cross-departmental policy testbed on the Isle of Wight could trial fare caps and public-utility ferry models for the Department for Transport; a revised Index of Multiple Deprivation formula that accounts for geographic isolation for the Treasury; AI-driven remote diagnostics for the Department of Health; mobility credits for the Department for Work and Pensions; and teacher recruitment incentives for the Department for Education. All running simultaneously, all measurable, all in a single bounded geography.
Layered on top, a digital twin of the island, fed by real-time data from the ferry gateways and local services, could allow policymakers to model interventions before they go live. The digital ID infrastructure becomes the connective tissue – the secure front door through which residents access trials and through which the government collects the data it needs to evaluate outcomes.
This is what Jones’ ambition of “government by app” looks like when you actually test it before you ship it, in exactly the same way that clinical trials are used in the pharmaceutical industry.
The political opportunity
Computer Weekly’s article ended by handing the decision to the public. That’s fair. But the public is being asked to choose between two hypothetical futures with no evidence for either. That isn’t informed consent, it’s a leap of faith.
A live trial on the Isle of Wight changes the terms of the debate entirely. It moves digital identity from political football to policy experiment. It gives the government something it has never had with digital ID – a proof of concept in the real world, with real people, generating real data.
The consultation is open. A people’s panel is being assembled. But consultations collect opinions. Trials collect evidence. If the government is serious about building public trust in digital identity, it should do both and the Isle of Wight is the obvious place to start.
The island has spent decades being treated as a problem to be solved. It’s time to recognise it as the country’s most valuable policy asset.
James Findlay is a former CTO/CIO in the UK government. He is the author of the Isle of Wight Living Lab proposal, which advocates for the island’s designation as a Special Policy Zone for cross-departmental government trials.
