Despite it’s initial success, the Government’s ambitious GOV.UK Verify programme, which aims to simplify and speed up registration for access to online government services, is running out of steam. By outsourcing online verification the Cabinet Office’s Government Digital Service hoped to do away with the cumbersome Government Gateway registration portal. It’s a nice idea but people just aren’t signing up.

Techno praised the service for helping 11,000 people avoid paying late submission fines on their self-assessment form this year, however latest figures show that only 27,187 people have successfully signed up for the service – which is public Beta – so far. Reaching just 5.4% of the half-a-million users GDS estimated that Verify would have by now…