Interoperability as Governance Capacity: Digital Infrastructures and the Mediation of Rights in the United Kingdom

Most people do not meet the government through grand constitutional speeches or legal textbooks. They meet it in the quiet, ordinary moments of daily life: proving who they are to start a new job, claiming a benefit to pay the rent, or simply buying a cup of coffee. For a long time, these moments were handled by separate offices, paper files, and human clerks who knew only the specific task at hand. But in the United Kingdom, a quiet transformation is underway. The state is building a new kind of infrastructure, not made of bricks or roads, but of digital systems designed to talk to one another. This shift is driven by a concept called interoperability. In plain terms, interoperability is the ability for different computer systems to exchange information and use that information to make decisions. It is the technical glue that allows a record from one department to be instantly understood and acted upon by another. While this sounds like a simple matter of efficiency, researchers are asking a deeper question: when these separate systems begin to link up, what happens to the rights of the people they serve?

A new study by Michael Sadowski, a researcher at The Open University, investigates exactly this question. The paper does not focus on a single piece of technology, such as a new app or a specific algorithm. Instead, it looks at the relationships between four major areas of British public life: digital identity verification, welfare benefits, the future of digital money, and environmental data tracking. The researcher examined official government documents, parliamentary reports, and regulatory guidelines from 2021 to mid-2026 to understand how these systems are being built and how they are being allowed to connect. The goal was to see if the way these systems are designed changes the practical experience of being a citizen, specifically regarding how people claim their rights and how the government makes decisions about them.

The study found that the UK is currently assembling a powerful new capacity, not through a single law or a master plan, but through the gradual linking of separate tools. In the realm of digital identity, new laws are creating a framework where citizens can use certified digital IDs to prove who they are for things like renting a home or checking right-to-work status. In the welfare system, algorithms are already being used to assess benefit claims and flag potential fraud, a process that is fully operational today. Looking ahead, the Bank of England is designing a potential digital pound, a form of central bank money that would create a detailed record of every transaction. Finally, there are emerging ideas about using personal data to track environmental behaviors, such as energy use or travel, to help meet climate goals.

Individually, each of these systems has its own justification. Digital IDs are meant to stop fraud and make services faster. Welfare algorithms are designed to save money and ensure fairness. A digital currency is intended to modernize payments. However, the researcher argues that the true significance lies in what happens when these systems are allowed to speak to each other. The study describes this linking ability as a form of "governance capacity." It is the power to take a fact generated in one area—like a digital ID check—and use it to make a decision in a completely different area, such as determining eligibility for a loan or assessing a risk score for welfare. This capacity allows the state to build a much richer, multi-layered picture of a person's life without necessarily creating a single, central database.

The paper suggests that this linking creates a specific problem that current laws are not designed to solve. Existing rules, such as data protection laws, were written with the idea that data would stay within a specific system for a specific purpose. They assume that if a government agency collects data to verify your identity, that data will stay there. But when systems are interoperable, that data can travel. It can flow from an identity check into a welfare assessment, or from a payment record into a risk profile. The study calls this an "accountability gap." When a decision is made based on the combination of several different systems, it becomes difficult to know who is responsible. If a person is denied a benefit because their digital ID, their welfare history, and their bank records were all combined to create a negative score, it is hard to pinpoint which part of the chain made the mistake. The legal tools designed to protect citizens often apply to single systems, leaving the connections between them largely unexamined.

The researcher distinguishes between what is happening now, what is being built, and what is only a possibility. Digital identity services and welfare algorithms are already in use or being rolled out. A digital pound is in the design phase, with no final decision yet made on its introduction. Personal environmental scoring is currently a boundary case, a theoretical possibility that has not been adopted as policy. The paper argues that even though these systems are at different stages, they are being designed with the same underlying assumption: that they should be able to connect. This creates a situation where the capacity to link them exists, even if the full network is not yet active. The study warns that this capacity amplifies the power of classification. It means that a person's life chances can be shaped by data points they did not expect to be linked, and by rules that operate across invisible boundaries.

One of the most striking findings is that the official documents rarely discuss the consequences of these links. Government reports focus heavily on the benefits: efficiency, fraud reduction, and convenience. They describe interoperability as a technical virtue that removes friction. The researcher notes that this silence is significant. By treating the connection of systems as a purely technical good, the potential risks to civil liberties and the ability to challenge decisions are often overlooked. The study does not claim that the UK is building a surveillance state or a social credit system like those seen in other countries. Instead, it argues that the UK is building a set of separate tools that, when combined, can produce similar effects of differentiated treatment, where people are sorted and judged based on complex data profiles that are hard to see and harder to contest.

The paper concludes that this new infrastructure requires a new kind of oversight. The researcher suggests that treating the relationships between systems as objects of democratic attention is essential. This would mean creating assessments that look at the impact of linking systems before they are connected, ensuring that data collected for one purpose cannot be silently used for another, and keeping non-digital routes open for those who cannot or will not use digital tools. The study emphasizes that the outcome is not yet fixed. Because the full network is still being assembled, there is a window of opportunity to shape how these systems interact. If the focus remains only on efficiency, the practical conditions under which people exercise their rights could drift away from legal protections without anyone noticing. But if the connections themselves are scrutinized, it is possible to build a system that is both efficient and fair, one that respects the right to be recognized and the right to challenge decisions in a world where data flows freely between the different corners of the state.