The £Billions at Stake: Digital ID Done Right

The UK stands at a pivotal moment. The proposed BritCard digital identity scheme offers real promise: more seamless access to government services, strengthened fraud detection, and a unified credential for many online and offline interactions. But the measure of its success will not be how many people use it, but who is left out, and what that exclusion costs - both to individuals and to the economy. Drawing on research at Women in Identity and on human stories from our Human Impact studies, this blog strengthens the argument that inclusive design is not optional - it's essential.

The scale of exclusion: humans behind the 12% figure

In the UK, it is estimated that 12% of people are excluded from identity-centric systems - meaning they struggle or fail to prove identity, access digital credentials, or navigate identity verification flows. These individuals often have to rely on fallback, manual, or in-person processes (where available) and many are still left behind.

From our Phase 2 Human Impact of Identity Exclusion work, we gathered testimony from people who confront exclusion in daily life. A few examples include people without a fixed address who could not pass address verifications and were blocked from opening a bank account, and older individuals lacking smartphone access or digital literacy who faced repeated rejection in digital-only verification systems.

These are not edge cases; they are real, tangible barriers that affect people's dignity, life chances, and access to essential services.

The economic and organisational cost of exclusion

While human stories are compelling, exclusion also carries a heavy price tag. In the Economic Impact of ID Inclusion research, Women in Identity commissioned the London School of Economics to quantify the hidden costs borne by organisations and governments when identity systems are not inclusive.

Here are some of the key findings:

• Unhappy-path costs are real and significant. When a customer or user cannot complete the standard identity flow, organisations often absorb costs for manual review, exception handling, delays, support, appeals, and remediation.
• Loss of business and foregone revenue: identity exclusion shrinks the addressable market. Some potential users simply give up, or are filtered out by design.
• Opportunity cost from design omissions: many organisations inadvertently silo out users by assuming a "happy path" that works only for the majority. Including inclusive design at the outset avoids expensive retrofit.
• Macro potential: while the WiD/LSE research focuses on organisational costs, other analyses suggest that making identity systems more inclusive could raise national GDP by 3-13% by 2030 in some contexts - a useful benchmark to aim at.

In short: exclusion doesn't just hurt individuals; it is expensive for institutions, squanders economic potential, and adds operational friction.

5 Principles of the Code of Conduct & 10 R’s of Identity Inclusion

To guide identity systems toward fairness and inclusivity, Women in Identity’s Code of Conduct presents 5 core principles:

• Empower agency: users must have meaningful control over their identity; how it’s used, consented, contested, and revoked.
• Ensure equitable access: design to reduce or eliminate barriers (technological, economic, social) so all demographics may participate.
• Design for diversity: embed excluded voices (older adults, people in remote areas, migrants, persons with disabilities) in design, testing, governance.
• Provide redress: build fallback, appeal, remediation, and human review paths for when errors or exclusions occur.
• Be accountable: track, audit, publish inclusion metrics, and embed oversight and transparency in governance.

Complementing those, the 10 R’s of Identity Inclusion offer tactical guardrails:

• Recognition
• Respect
• Representation
• Redress
• Reach
• Resilience
• Reversibility
• Responsibility
• Robustness
• Relevance

What the government must do to ensure BritCard is inclusive (and cost-effective)

With these facts in hand, BritCard can either be a path to broad inclusion - or a system that institutionalises exclusion. To build the inclusive path, here are concrete actions for the government:

• Mandate inclusive access modes from day one - not just mobile apps: also physical cards, in-person enrolment centres, kiosk or postal fallback; assisted onboarding (in-person or remote) for people with low digital literacy.
• Launch pilots in diverse settings and with vulnerable groups - urban and rural; low-income, older adults, migrants, persons with disability. Use the findings to refine flows before scaling.
• Embed independent audits and public metrics - track exclusion rates, flow failure rates, appeals outcomes; publish dashboards; commission third-party review of equity and fairness.
• Fund digital inclusion programmes in parallel - connectivity grants, subsidised devices, training, community outreach; bridge the digital divide so people can use BritCard in practice.
• Require participatory governance - representation of civil society groups, disability advocates, inclusion specialists, and marginalised communities; ongoing consultation, feedback loops, design sprints with real users.
• Design default fallback/redress flows - no one should be blocked outright; manual, human review and appeal processes; grace periods and transitional compliance windows.
• Use economic incentives to drive inclusion - mandate inclusive criteria in procurement and public contracts; reward private-sector participants who meet high inclusion thresholds; support organisations to internalise the cost benefits of widening the "happy path".

If done right, these measures reduce the "unhappy path" burden, unlock latent users, and avoid expensive retrofitting.

Reframing success: inclusion as strategic

Here’s what success looks like:

• The large majority of people can get a working digital identity without friction.
• The residual exclusions are small in number and supported with human, non-punitive fallback.
• Government and private services see lower support, appeals, and remediation costs.
• Increased economic participation, formalisation, and value captured across demographics.
• Trust in the system reinforces adoption, making it harder to later add exclusionary rules.

By contrast, ignoring inclusion risks:

• Institutionalising a digital underclass.
• Higher operational costs, appeals, fraud risk, and system complexity.
• Public backlash, reputational damage, and legal challenges.

Conclusion: a chance to lead - and not repeat old mistakes

In the years ahead, BritCard may become a central pillar of UK public life. It’s vital that it’s built not just for "some people," but for all people. The cost of failing to design inclusively is already visible in micro-studies: unhappy-path burdens, lost revenue, and social exclusion. The macro upside - broader GDP, deeper participation, stronger trust - may be even larger.

At Women in Identity, we believe these design choices matter. The 5 Principles and 10 R’s are not theoretical: they are practical guardrails. The evidence shows that inclusion is not an afterthought - it is a smarter, more future-resistant path.

BritCard has the potential to be a global exemplar of how nations build digital identity in the 21st century. Let’s ensure that exemplar is inclusive, just, and empowering.

What’s next for the ID Code of Conduct? Join us in shaping the future of inclusion in identity

With our research partner Beruku Identity we are moving into the next phase of our research: developing the ID Code of Conduct principles - a pragmatic, actionable international set of guidelines for identity teams.

We are seeking experts in product design, service design, framework development, and policy-making to join a series of virtual roundtable workshops running through 2025/26.

We will host a series of virtual roundtables and interviews with different stakeholders from across the identity space. These roundtables will build on the previous work conducted by Women in Identity, the World Bank, NIST, and others on inclusion and deliver a pragmatic code of practice for identity providers that addresses current inclusion challenges and informs delivery of inclusive identity services.

Are you a product owner involved in the design, development or commercial deployment of identity-products or services? Do you have 90 minutes to participate in a roundtable where we will discuss assumptions about inclusion, barriers, and pragmatic approaches to address the challenge of identity exclusion?

By taking part, you’ll help us ensure that the authentication and IDV customer journey is designed to be inclusive, effective, and future-proof.