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The Government Gateway is the e-government ‘Champion Asset’ to allow businesses and citizens to communicate and transact with government departments electronically. It delivers online services to an astonishing range of government departments, public bodies, local authorities and millions of citizens.
Atos has built one of the most secure online environments in existence for the UK Government, which enables Atos to be a “Trust Broker”, working to federate identity management and validation on behalf of many different public and private bodies.
Business Challenges
The drive for more cost-effective, efficiently delivered public services in the UK led to the creation in 2001 of Government Gateway. Now defined as a key national asset, it aimed to help develop:
- Joined-up government, simplifying how central government departments, agencies and local authorities structure and deliver their services
- Asset sharing, prioritizing reuse of capability, technology and knowledge
- Quality and convenience, empowering citizens to access personalized services when and how it suits them
- Speed and cost, making delivery more efficient, saving money for use in front-line services
Atos was deeply involved in the project from the start, working with the UK Government’s own eDelivery Team and a range of technology partners, most notably Microsoft.
Solution
The sheer scale of the project is extraordinary:
- By early 2011, some 18 million people had registered for Government Gateway: nearly 30% of the UK population
- More than 180 separate services are now accessible, including income tax returns, driving license applications, car tax payments, passport applications and many others
- Services are provided by almost 100 different departments, local authorities and agencies
- The system is powered by Atos’ unique HTTS transaction capability, providing secure and 99.99% trouble-free processing for the largest requirements. For example, Government Gateway handles close to 500,000 tax-related transactions on its busiest day
Benefits
By using Government Gateway, public sector organizations can focus on designing services around citizen needs while gaining benefits that include:
- Reduced IT cost, with no requirement to develop or procure expensive middleware or ID management systems
- Improved customer experience through proven online access methods that people understand and trust, together with access to many different services with a single ID token
- More secure personal information, leading to higher levels of confidence and user adoption
- The financial benefit was summarized by the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, who stated that online self-assessment for tax, enabled via Government Gateway, costs only one fifth as much as paper-based transactions
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