Vouchsafe completes CivTech Challenge

Over the last two years, we’ve been working with the Scottish Government on a CivTech challenge, which asked: “How can technology help increase access to public services and products by making use of the trusted relationships people already have?”

Today marks the end of our formal work through CivTech, and the start of a deeper phase of collaboration with the Scottish Government’s ScotAccount team.

CivTech is the Scottish Government’s innovation programme, which pairs public‑sector challenges with tech start‑ups like us.

ScotAccount is the secure and simple way for people to prove who they are and that they are eligible for a public service or benefit online. It helps people access a growing number of public services online without creating separate accounts or verifying their identity more than once. 

If you’ve been following us for a while, you’ll know that the original concept for Vouchsafe came from this challenge.

The work was done in three stages:

• A 3‑week competitive exploration phase
• A 3‑month accelerator, which served as our discovery phase and ended with a demo day
• A 12‑month alpha phase, testing ideas in real‑world contexts

Over this time, we’ve worked with colleagues in the Scottish Government to design and test identity verification routes that help people who might otherwise struggle to verify their identity to access public services, especially those with thin credit files.

We’ve also certified the technology under the UK Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework (DIATF). This was a key challenge: identity systems in government are built for long-term re-use, so meeting shared standards and aligning with risk appetites across the whole public sector ecosystem is critical.

The extra checks and biometric controls we place around a vouch from a trusted referee help us meet that bar.

We’re now preparing for public beta: refining the service, expanding our reach and laying the groundwork to scale rapidly.

Our designer Amy will also be presenting what we’ve learned from users during the last two years at Service Design in Government in September.

Thank you, CivTech

CivTech helped broker the partnership that brought Vouchsafe into being. We’re grateful for the support, insight and momentum the programme has given us, and excited to keep building with the Scottish Government from here.

To the ScotAccount  team at the Scottish Government, our pilot partners and the trusted referees who made this possible: thank you.

If you’re exploring inclusive, standards-aligned ways to verify identity in the public sector, contact chloe@vouchsafe.id to learn more.