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The UK government has launched a new mobile app that will eventually allow Britons to access thousands of public services on their smartphones as well as paving the way for new digital identity cards.
Technology secretary Peter Kyle said the new gov.uk app would streamline access to public services from claiming benefits to renewing a passport, although it will be launched as a “beta” service that initially only connects to existing government websites.
The app is part of a multibillion-pound cost-cutting drive across Whitehall that relies on digitising the civil service, including using AI for administrative tasks and replacing postal communications with online channels.
Earlier this year, Sir Keir Starmer said digitisation could bring up to £45bn in savings and productivity benefits annually across the public sector.
The “beta” version of the app that launches for iPhones and Android devices on Tuesday will offer little more than a series of bookmarks and shortcuts to the existing government website.
Each user can select from one of 11 topics that they use most frequently, including benefits, care, parenting, tax and travel. The app will also keep track of previous searches and, if the user enters their postcode, their local council’s website.
Kyle promised “a very rapid rate of progress” in the coming months, including the launch of an artificial intelligence chatbot — designed in partnership with US-based Anthropic — and digital driving licences by the end of 2025.
“What we’re embarking on right now is the warm-up lap,” he said. “Very soon, by the end of this year, we will be in the main race.”
The new app was designed in-house by the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) unit, which also launched the original gov.uk website in 2012.
That 700,000-page site is now used 88mn times every month, with more than half of those visits from mobile devices — a process the dedicated app is designed to simplify. It was developed by a core team of 32 people inside GDS.
Kyle said he hoped the app would help with “ending the scandal of Royal Mail delivering so much information, which people should be getting electronically”.
The UK’s launch of a government “super app” comes several years after similar services were introduced in India, Poland, Ukraine and Singapore.
India launched its Unified Mobile Application for New-Age Governance (UMANG) in 2017, offering access to hundreds of local and central government services in more than a dozen Indian languages.
Back in 2013, GDS leadership argued that investing heavily in mobile apps was “rarely justified”, when retooling regular web pages for smartphone screens would do.
That position has changed following the popularity of dedicated NHS and HM Revenue & Customs apps, as well as younger users’ expectation of “mobile-first” services, officials said.
Kyle proposed a one-stop-shop app for public services soon after Labour took office last year.
“For me, this is a progressive cause, because those people who use [public] services the most [are] people who are usually on lower incomes or in areas of deprivation or have grown up in tough circumstances,” he said.
The project was “fully on track” to “start the rollout” of digital driving licences by the end of the year, he added. That will initially be available via a new digital wallet app that will later be folded into the main gov.uk app, he added.