Leading public sector IT bosses have told silicon.com they would welcome moves by the UK government to adopt federated identity in order to provide the public with faster, more efficient access to online services. But one expert believes the government has been too preoccupied with the controversial ID cards project to consider such as solution.

Federation would essentially mean government departments would share the public's identities across their systems and authenticate against one another. This would speed the process of signing in and using multiple online services and would eliminate layers of administration.

Richard Steel, head of ICT at London Borough of Newham, gave such a system a ringing endorsement. "I see it as the way forward," he told silicon.com.

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