4 guides
Digital public services
What joined-up government looks like to the people who use it: proving who you are online, records that are reused rather than requested again, and services built around life events.
The guides
Digital identity and eIDAS
Levels of assurance, cross-border eID recognition and the European Digital Identity Wallet, with the UK approach alongside.
02Base registries and data exchange
The authoritative registers behind joined-up services, and how Estonia's X-Road lets agencies exchange their data securely.
03Life-event services
Organising services around births, moves, new businesses and bereavements, and when the state should act without being asked.
04AI in public administration
How public bodies use AI, what the EU AI Act requires of them, and why data quality matters.
From forms to services
A digital service is more than an online form. Behind the screen it needs a trusted way to identify people, authoritative records to check against and secure channels for one public body to ask another for information. When those foundations are in place, services can be organised around what people are trying to do rather than around which department owns which form.
Foundations and frontiers
The first two guides cover the foundations: digital identity, including the European Digital Identity Wallet, and the base registries and data exchange layers that let services reuse information. The other two look at how services are designed on top of them: life-event services that bring several steps together, and the growing use of artificial intelligence, with the rules that now apply to it.
The same questions throughout
Every guide returns to the same questions: what the legal basis is, who is accountable when something goes wrong, and how people can see and challenge decisions made about them. For the principles behind all of this, see interoperability.
Articles on digital public services
Shorter, practical pieces that build on these guides.
Why “address” is the hardest word in government data
An address field can hold four different ideas. Why that breaks matching, and the three fixes that work.
Read the articleMoving to another EU country: what the once-only system changes
What the EU's evidence exchange lets someone moving country skip, step by step, and where paper still wins.
Read the articleFive questions to ask before you build a new public register
Whether a new register becomes a trusted source or another stale copy is decided by five early questions.
Read the articleWhat the EU Digital Identity Wallet means for public services
Three jobs the EU wallet creates for public bodies: accept it at sign-in, issue attestations and ask for less.
Read the articleProactive services: when should the state act without being asked?
Four tests for deciding when a public service should act before anyone applies, and when it shouldn't.
Read the articleYour first algorithm inventory: preparing for the AI Act and the ATRS
The fields worth recording for every AI and algorithmic tool, and how they map to EU and UK duties.
Read the article