Building Blocks: What Services Can Use from TRIDENT
TRIDENT provides a set of reusable identity capabilities rather than a single prescribed journey. Each service uses only the pieces it needs.
There's no single way a Government service works, so TRIDENT isn't built as a single way of doing things.
It provides a set of capabilities. Each ministry, department or agency will use only the ones its service actually needs, and decides the journey around them.
What's in the set
- Establishing identity, confirming who someone is when they first come to a service, in person or remotely
- Signing in, letting a citizen access a service with their national identity
- Stronger confirmation, asking for additional proof before a sensitive action
- Verified identity details, receiving confirmed information with the citizen's consent instead of asking for documents
- Electronic signature, capturing a legally recognised signature without printing anything
- Issuing a credential, turning a record your institution is the authority on into a digital credential the citizen holds
- Checking a credential, confirming that a credential someone presents is genuine and current
The same set, combined differently
A service that publishes information may need nothing more than a secure sign-in.
An application for a benefit might use four pieces at once: the citizen signs in, their identity details are confirmed with consent, they complete what's specific to the request, and they sign electronically from their phone.
An office issuing a licence might use two: establish identity at the counter, then issue the licence as a digital credential the holder can present elsewhere.
None of these is more correct than the others. The institution decides which pieces fit its purpose, its risk and its policy.
Added where they fit, not all at once
Because the pieces are separate, they can be adopted separately. An existing service doesn't have to be rebuilt to use one of them. A ministry can connect a single point in an existing journey, keep everything else as it is, and extend later.
The systems, records and decisions stay with the institution. Identity is what stops being built service by service.
How a service gets there
Institutions can register for TRIDENT's testing environment before committing to anything. There, teams learn how the capabilities work, and their developers integrate their own applications, systems and processes against them without touching anything live.
Going into production is a separate, formal step. Before a service can operate with real citizens, the institution must be registered as a relying party in the TRIDENT ecosystem: an approved participant, with the specific capabilities and information it's permitted to use defined up front.
That order is deliberate. Teams can explore and build first, and formal approval comes when there's a real service to approve.
Planning which capabilities your service needs?
APIs, technical documentation and integration guidance are available in the TRIDENT Integration Portal.