Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to increase use of digital documentation to reduce business costs.

The Government recognises that the UK’s economic future, prosperity and productivity are all reliant on continued and growing success in digital technology.

DCMS is playing its part by taking steps to create a secure and trusted digital identity marketplace that can operate across economic sectors. Enabling the use of trusted digital identities in the UK will provide individuals with an alternative to offline manual identity proofing, which are estimated to cost between £800 million to £2 billion per annum*. This work is strongly supported by businesses as it is estimated that a fully functioning digital identity market that could generate direct annual economic benefits to the UK economy between £743m and £938m*.

The Central Digital and Data Office is also working with government departments to baseline service performance and capture any opportunities for efficiency through digital transformation. This includes opportunities to reform non-digital transactions and processes such as manual handling of paperwork.

*Digital identity and attributes De Minimis Assessment (2022)

*Economic Benefits of Digital Identity, Deloitte, 2020 (unpublished)