UK Tech Secretary introduces Digital ID

[Applause] thank you amarie uh thank you all for being here today uh it's a really important moment uh for us here in the digital Center of government uh you all used to the fact that tech companies when they launch products they do so by embracing the public and their customers bringing them in to the process of testing their products bringing them into the way that they do and design their products but in government we do things very very differently we shut people out until the very last moment until we have to let them in well that's what we're trying to change here today and that's why it's so significant that you are here today in a government Department in the digital Center of government because we have nothing to hide we want to Embrace Transparency which is why I've thanked the people who introduce me Martha and Amry I am thanking the people who are here who have come to enjoy this session the people I really want to thank the most are these people standing around the outside who are the data programmers engineers and the people deploying technology right across government so for me as your secretary of state thank you from the bottom of my heart transparency is really important uh and it's very important that we you all here today to enjoy this moment that uh to to start launching some of the products that we have the gap between the tech sector uh and the gap between the tech sector and the public who are using our products and services has got too big now in in opposition when we were designing the program for government there were three priorities that we set out for the new desit the department of Science in Innovation and technology is so different from the one that we had inherited again a credit to all of the officials and Sarah is with us as permanent secretary officials who made the change happen because there are three priorities that we had in opposition that we brought into government the first is that science Innovation and Technology will contribute towards the economic growth of our country this cycle that we have been stuck in with low growth and high tax it won't fix itself it will only fix it will only be fixed if we choose to act and to govern differently and Technology cannot be a sideline activity it must be brought in to how we do it last week you saw the Prime Minister launch the AI opportunities action plan that plan creates AI investment zones around the country it sets up two new units to harness the power of AI and bring it into government into the heart of government with one of those units who are reporting directly to the Prime Minister and myself because when I go to Silicon Valley I see all the constituent parts that makes it magic here in the UK but we're not harnessing it we're not coordinating it we're not focusing it in a way that keeps Britain at the Forefront so so that we can start actually creating the companies which will be large enough to shape the future not just of our economy but the global economy and why can't we as a country have that scale of ambition the second pillar that we are standing on the new desct is playing a leadership role in is improving the productivity and performance of government itself now some of the tools that we'll be delivering that you will be able to experience today and from the press and other other people who are visiting us today these tools are on display and you'll be able to interact with them but not just that the officials the programmers the engineers and those deploying it are going to be available to talk to you and answer your questions directly another sign that this government is throwing open the doors to be tested to be interacted with so that you can actually hear yourself and meet the people who are designing this change and to give you an example of just one of the tools that you will be able to see and ex and interact with today and the power of some of the tools that we are designing here in this building in the center of government the digital Center of government it is a productivity tool which helps with consultations we do thousands of consultations in government and it takes an enormous amount of time why because it's obvious there's hundreds of years of legislation and regulation that you need to consult with to see what advice to put to ministers about what is possible what isn't possible and the like so this particular tool consult Works 1,000 times times faster and 400 times cheaper than a human being does that's 52 hours compared to six years if it was just a human working on their own that is the technology that we are bringing into government and deploying on behalf of the citizens the people of this country and thirdly is the bit that I want to talk to you about today the third pillar is the way that we are going to transform the relationship between Citizen and State because it is absolutely important and vital that we do so just bear in mind that somebody who is 18 years old today has never known life without an iPhone it was launched the year that they were born so think of the experience that people who have never known life outside of interacting with Commerce banking and travel Services think of how they view government today where if you want to have a doctor's appointment you wait on a phone you find out that you've done something wrong because you get the find through the through the through the through the mail too late to actually make a difference it is an alien environment for people who are looking on from the outside compared to how people are interacting that's why satisfaction incredibly in government Digital Services has fallen 11% over the last decade that is unacceptable it's understandable why the gap between that why government sometimes takes longer to adopt and deploy technology simply because the people that we are looking after the data we hold on behalf of people is very very sensitive more so than it is for the private sector who are uh looking after their customers but it is totally unforgivable that the Gap has been allowed to get as big as it is today and that is what we are changing and that is what the products and services that we are launching today will take a giant leap forward in solving now one of the products that we've that I want show you is something that has actually been public in public beta testing for a little while government has an incredible website called gov.uk it is ubiquitously known across the country it is used by 12 million individual uh users every single week now behind that one portal into government services lies 700,000 pages of government uh government information uh it is an enormous variety so to get the information and type in a search question using a standard search you've got to search multiple things to get multiple answers and you've got to put it all together in your head so we've designed by working with open AI the company behind chat GPT we have designed gov.uk chat chat it is using the latest technology to harness all of that information and turn it into a usable conversational human style interaction with government who would have thought such a thing was even possible uh so and that is one of the key points that I've discovered about AI it actually delivers a more human experience not a less Human Experience and this is something that you're going to hear repeatedly as we go forward so as you can see the conversations that are unfolding because we've start we've started putting it into beta testing so we're engaging with the public and asking the public to come in and test a government service you have no idea how difficult this is for government to handle the concept of uh because we understandably there is caution about the way we design products and services the idea of inviting the public in to test it and having the media there to see what answers and mistakes are made because you make mistakes in public is really difficult so I had an advice this is no criticism of my wonderful officials uh the first advice that came up to me is I should say as far away from this T testing process as possible but my instinct is to get as close to that testing process as possible possible because it's really important that firstly we do not blame officials when things go a little bit haywire and we are asking things to go Haywire because we need the public to come in and test it so we get the interactions uh and secondly it is really important that the public start to understand that increasingly in an online world and government is moving to an online world that we will interact at an earlier stage so that we can use the power the insight and the volume of interactions that the public can provide in tes so yes the chat system did start talking French Midway through the testing series but it was a stake we learned from which is why these interactions because at the moment it is focused on business uh and professional questions soon it will be open to the whole range of questions that anybody up and down the country can interact with government for uh but but at the moment is about business questions but all the variety of questions are coming in it is getting better smarter swifter and more efficient and effective interacting with people uh as we speak now let's show it live um we have Cuba over here who is doing the Fantastic technical support today and I'm going to start with a question for myself and then I'm going to ask somebody from the audience hopefully one of our sharpest smartest journalists to ask a professional question uh of it afterwards just to show that I am quite prepared to stand here uh and test this system to extremist so a question that might be Rel to my job Cuba uh I've lost my job in a reshuffle what should I do now what is happening is this is this system is going away and analyzing 700,000 pages of government data it is trying to humanize the response to give a sister to give a response that helps people move forward now already it is giving me help on finding a new job it is giving emotional support on what to do if I do it is sign posting to where I go it suggests that I should consider alternative employment but we'll uh judge that later um and it's also trying to find time suggesting you make time to uh to to start looking for alternative jobs but it also suggests that I get in touch with DWP and luckily we have the Secretary State on hand uh so I can get the best service possible so that gives you a flavor of the kind of richness that can be delivered from interacting with gov.uk now who has a professional

question that you want to ask uh our chat system come on otherwise I'd have to ask a second one go ahead Sam I knew it you Sam okay um show the expenses for the Secretary of State foret Peter Peter Kai I was going to say where treating now I'm going to be very curious to see what it says here because we have we have tested this system to Oblivion and used all of the testing systems that we have at our disposal because we have the AI safety Institute as well uh and in all of the times there thousands and thousands of interactions with chat. not once has it been broken has it been jailbroken so we are limiting the questions to professional uh questions and answers that help people in different professional settings so when you try and get it to encourage it to do things that are naughty like Sam is trying to do there you're going to have to be smarter than that we got AI we got artificial intelligence there we've got Sam coat's intelligence there and so far it's one Zer so um the next step is is very very clear because we have this system which you can use from a laptop you can lose from you can use from uh a desktop and you can use it via your uh web browser on your phone these are all very convenient and it shows the power of what government is able to do now but let's go back to that teenager who's now 18 and just grown up with the iPhone it is very clear that you can't just expect people in this day and age just to start using multiple web web pages just so they can get all of the experiences that they expect from using apps because apps can bring together a huge variety of different uh of different material we also know that people who are dis who are digitally excluded at the moment and I want to say this at the very top uh of the presentation before we move to the app which we'll come to because there are still people who are who are struggling to access the online world and it is incredibly important that we never leave them behind and inclusion will never be an afterthought it will never be an afterthought for me it will never be an afterthought for this government so making government uh Services more online it does not mean that those people who can't access the internet will be left behind in fact what we are discovering is that the more we we make online services easier to access uh more satisfying to access then it means that we as a government can start focusing human resources on those people who need and can only interact in a human in a human way and need the support to do so and that can be part and it will be wrapped up into the digital inclusion work that we'll be doing and talking about a bit later um that does mean that one of the counterintuitive things I've learned about AI is that AI actually helps you deliver a Far More Human Experience for those people using uh AI based systems but also those people who are excluded from it because of the intensity we can then wrap around with the human support that they get that is one of the counterintuitive but very powerful ways that we are um moving forward because we will deliver public service that are more human not less so don't think that any of the work we're announcing today and will be announcing are taking the human element out of what we do today it takes 40 different interactions across nine different organizations to manage a long-term health condition if you have to engage in 10 different government departments simply to set up a business this is just totally unacceptable it was unacceptable 10 years ago incidentally it was certainly unacceptable 14 years ago but it is even more unacceptable today and that's why it is really good for us to announce that we have launched and will be launching the gov.uk app and you'll be pleased to know I have it on a phone in front of me and when I launched the app you can see on the screens that it REM resembles the very best of apps that you would already be experiencing in life today now if I nip through the questions you get at the beginning which explains what the app does comes straight to the One login page One login is something that anybody that's interacted with gov.uk is already familiar with it is an ultra safe and secure login to online services increasingly Services across government are moving into One login and it is fully integrated at the outset of using the app why is that important it's quite obvious we need to reassure ourselves that the people who are accessing government data are the people they say they are and this is using the very best technology to do so once you go through that this is the bit I am most excited about because the first thing the app does is it helps you personalize the experience that you will get from the app this app will over time harness the power of all government services from all parts of the United Kingdom from central government public services and local authorities too so that means you can have an app that is so jam-packed full of information that you can't find what you're looking for swiftly so that process of personalizing it from the outset is absolutely front and center because we will as a government start wrapping services around individual people's needs not as it currently is asking citizens to wrap Services uh to wrap their lives around the needs of services this is fundamental and this is the greatest step forward that we've seen so initially a set of questions asking about who I am where I live and what stage in life I'm at so that the services behind it can be tailored to me and then just look at what the homepage will offer and this is version one bear in mind look at what the first thing will offer straight away the services you use most often so you could go straight into student loan for example and these are all aspects of student loan that you can access from the very very first bit of the page then you will have topics at your disposal based on your individual needs every single person in this room and every single person out there in the country will have a different set of features on the homepage based on their own needs that's why this is so special and you only have to know what the government is like at the moment to see this and realize what an enormous step forward is going to be so benefits right there at the outset I cannot praise Liz and her Department highly enough because when you understand that this and everything subsequent that I'm going to talk about in the rest of this presentation wasn't underway when we came into office everything including this app was started after July the 4th last year in six months we've got this far and with a government Department as complicated as DWP you can see just how much enthusiasm just how much leadership is required to deliver what we're talking about here when you go into the benefits you can see Universal Credit and these are all just some of the services that can be accessed from Universal Credit this is the first iteration it is about interacting with things currently that you need to know about your uh your Universal Credit system going forward it will mean you can interact in a much more sophisticated and forward-looking way this is just the start and then we go down to the bottom you can see there uh uh local Authority uh work is is being integrated into the app as well and then we have Payment Systems you'll see a payment schedule so everything you pay to the government is going to be there in a schedule so you can see what's upcoming if you have a bit of extra cash at the end of the month you can pay something a little bit earlier than you would have done before you can choose what that is and you can interact with it in a way that's totally reminiscent of the rest of the way you interact so let's just choose one the top one there is your vehicle license fee you want to pay it now because you've been paid a bit earlier and it'll take you to a page like this totally reminiscent of the way you shop the way you bank and the way you travel and this is now the way you interact with your government this is something that is completely on a different level than people who have ever experienced before from their government and then we go to not chat we've already gone through integrated into the app and then you go to Notifications so you can see all of the different things that you might want to be just made proactively aware of you're in control of this you decide what you want to be made aware of if you go into a country uh in a couple of weeks time or a couple of days you can ask for an alert if there's anything that comes up from the foreign office about that country local weather events and any of the government services that might impact your life you can ask for proactive uh you can ask for proactive notifications on it again reminiscent to the way that people interact with the rest of their their lives but for government this is like going to a different planet all together and I'm really proud that we've delivered this in six months and it will be announced and deployed to the country in June this year there's another aspect to life in in apps that people have got used to and that includes uh wallets uh we all remember the time when we had wallets physically uh they went through a stage over a few years where they got bigger and bigger and bigger because uh Loyalty cards started going into them and other banking cards started going into them uh but then they went shorter and shorter and shorter because then those same cars went online into a digital wallet a digital wallet that you'll all be very familiar amiliar with with Google and apple and other services uh but it is an essential part of life interacting with banking travel and commerce services but it is something completely alien to the government experience itself so shortly after launching the app we will launch the digital wallet that will go into the app and that will enable over time government services which Rel which rely or require or are enabled by a card will go into the digital wallet in the app itself the very first card that we're going to announce is a veterans card there are 250,000 veterans in our country and we want to honor them and their service to our country by making them first in the queue for having their rights uh and and their their um B the benefits of being a veteran fully enabled in their hand in their pocket on the smartphone now it takes just just under half of veterans uh are disabled just under a third of them say that they are lonely now a veteran card can enable all sorts of access to services and benefits for them thanks and based on the service they've given our country they can Access housing they can access employment and health support they get free travel to Remembrance Day services and they get support from Charities so it is right that they are the first to go into the service and you can see just how satisfactory this is so at the moment it can take weeks and weeks for them to apply for a card it arrive in the post once you qualify it can be down and downloaded to your app just within a couple of hours you can see that once it's there um it it will be downloaded and you can upload it into your uh digital wallet and it will be there when you need it whenever you need it uh going forward and that it will be the first card that goes in there is another card that most people in this country are crying out for to go digital and that is the fact that we have 50 million drivers in our country we have 50 million people with paper based driving licenses and it is totally unsatisfactory that we don't have a digital alternative in 2025 that changes today because the next card that will go in this year will be the digital driving license people have there's two functions for a driving license the first is that it proves you are eligible to drive that you've passed a driving test now people have to carry the card around with them in order to prove that they have it some people lose it uh some people don't carry it with them and they have to then go back and report it to enforcement agencies if they requested within a week it's just a process that you shouldn't be having to go through in this day and age it's wasting time uh it's not satisfactory people don't enjoy the interaction they have with it so we will allow we will launch the digital driving license and it will go into people's wallets digital wallets in the same way that you have experienced with um uh with the veterans card just now again a swift easy process which will mean it's always with you but there's one more thing too there is a second function to the digital driving license to the driving license and that is it is a legal form of proving your age and that process we cannot leave out when we move to a digital driving license so for me for this government it is incredibly pleasing for us to say that the digital driving license will have that function you will be able to prove and verify your age digitally using the digital driving license and this is going to be absolutely liberating because there's two aspects to this there's life offline and there is life online offline we live in a world where the previous government lost control of safety people didn't feel safe uh in streets they don't feel safe online and they certainly don't think their children are safe online and we have to act on it so with the digital driving license it will cover two SE separate aspects of it when you are in person you can generate a you can generate a code where you can hold up and prove you are who you say you are and you are the age you say you are without having to reveal your name or your address it's a big step forward in the present offline world but secondly now more people are interacting in Online ways they're banking they're shopping they're traveling they're buying services online and many of those will have age related restrictions to them here you've got a great example of fireworks here I am Peter Kyle buying fireworks including I want to add a fire bucket for safety and we uh once we're purchasing it uh it is going to ask for to me to prove that I am the age that I say I am will go to the age verification bit which you're going to see increasingly now uh online when you ask for it it's going to the offer the off offer you to go to the the gov.uk app to prove you are who you are and it is this Swift it will skip to the app it will open it verify you are who you say you are using biometric data it will go straight there and you will choose which data you release you will have another opportunity not to release it if you don't want to nothing is shared publicly but it will jump back to the app in a matter of seconds and that means that the person buying knows that it's been done in a safe and secure manner the retailer knows that they are complying with the law and we as a society can know that we are using the latest technology in order to keep people safe these are Big steps forward for government it is a giant step forward now these projects all of the ones I've talked about was started just six months ago it's hard to to believe that government can do this in that time which is why I started the presentation by thanking those people who are responsible for doing it because they have thrown their heart and soul and time into doing it the state has just simply been behind for too long and today today that changes so we are going to close that gap between the private sector and the state people can finally have high expectations of government and even though we won't always meet it they will know we are striving to meet those high expectations the products that you've seen today are just the start and it's really important for me to say that we were moving by putting information analysis and access to services in people's hands Liz is driven by by the the aim of putting a job center in people's pockets in people's hands think of how liberating that is for people with multiple jobs a complex family life and they are the ones that are burdened almost the most with having to interact in the state in a way that simply isn't fit for the day for the age we're living in so today we' have taken those first steps forward by putting information into people's hands the next stages are obvious but you won't have to wait so long because you can see the determination the direction of travel you will have the app by June and by the by the end of this year you will have the digital driving license we're using technology to drive radical far-reaching reform of our public sector and of Public Services themselves the only route to a smaller state is via a smarter State and what you're seeing today are those crucial steps forward you can interact with some of the productivity tools you can read the AI opportunities action plan you can now see the apps that we'll be releasing to empower citizens to take control of their lives when they interact with their government and this is just the start thank you very much [Applause]

2025-02-08 02:23

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