Data Strategy

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

Our plans for our data strategy are extremely ambitious. We see it as a crucial part of driving economic prosperity and social good. We believe that we have laid the foundations for that already and will announce more detail in due course.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the Government’s call for evidence on digital identity was issued in July 2019; it rightly emphasised the importance of public trust and the role that a successful approach to digital identity can play in the use of public data. That call closed last September, so is it not high time that we had some policy proposals in this crucial area, too—especially given the failures of the past, such as Verify—so as to ensure that, as techUK has suggested, we create a framework of standards that can be used by all players in this field?

[Baroness Barran]

The noble Lord is right that digital identity and having clarity on that is critical. The Government have been very open about having had some unavoidable delays, most particularly around the election and now, sadly, with Covid. Part of the work within the strategy will be to identify which areas and datasets to prioritise and focus on.