26/09/2025
Mps talk about a UK-wide digital ID app as if it’s a neat little mobile app project, but in reality:
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1. Scale problem
• The UK has ~67 million people, but if you include residents, temporary workers, students, expats, duplicate logins, device resets, test accounts, the system could easily have to manage 100–200 million active credentials over its life.
• Running that securely is not “just an app” — it’s a massive, ongoing national identity infrastructure project.
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2. Cost problem
• Upfront build: you need cloud infrastructure, cryptographic key management, identity proofing, customer support, audits, integration with every department + private sector.
• Running costs: continuous security patching, AI red-teaming, 24/7 monitoring, revocation services, user helpdesks, GDPR compliance.
• Upgrades: every 2–3 years the app would need redesign as phones, OSes, and security standards evolve.
• Billions per year is realistic when you factor in scale, vendor contracts, audits, and cyber-defence.
(For comparison: the GOV UK Verify scheme cost £175m before being abandoned, and that was tiny compared to what’s now being proposed.)
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3. Technical limits
• No app can natively hold 182m accounts on a single platform — it’s really a distributed identity network backed by multiple servers, with users accessing their credential through an app.
• The “app” is just the front end. The heavy lifting (encryption, verification, revocation, audits, scaling) happens in massive data centres or government-contracted cloud services.
• Every login, revocation, or attribute check has to flow through those back-end systems.
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4. Political / legal risk
• If billions are sunk into this and it fails (like NHS IT projects or Verify), it’s taxpayers’ money wasted.
• If it works but suffers a major breach, the fallout would dwarf the benefits.
• Equality, GDPR, and accessibility issues mean the government will still have to keep parallel systems (passports, driving licences, paper proofs). That doubles cost.
and i cant even get a doctors appointment ?
