The UK Government isn’t just developing a Digital Infrastructure here in Britain...

@Lewis_Brackpool
The UK Government isn’t just developing a Digital Infrastructure here in Britain, it’s also funding and building it for foreign nations.

Official Freedom of Information documents confirm that the UK Government has spent around £3.8 million of taxpayer money funding and designing Digital-Governance and ID systems in Bosnia & Herzegovina and Georgia.

Documents obtained by Restore Britain under the Freedom of Information Act reveal the following key findings:

- The Bosnia and Herzegovina “Digital Transformation in the Public Sector Project (2022–2025)” is funded at approximately £2.7 million, building national e-service portals, open-data platforms, interoperability frameworks, and digital-ID and e-payment modules.

- The project also develops a Public Service Design Toolkit based on UK Government Digital Service (GDS) methods, effectively exporting Britain’s digital-government design model abroad.

- The UK is listed as a key partner in the creation of this toolkit.

- The Georgia “Public Administration Reform Phase 2” programme receives around £1 million, focusing on trust-services alignment with EU eIDAS regulations, mobile-ID feasibility, and cyber-security for citizen-data systems.

- Combined, these programmes total approximately £3.8 million of UK taxpayer funding for digital-ID-linked governance systems overseas.

The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) refused to release several underlying briefings and risk assessments, applying Section 27 (International Relations) of the FOI Act, claiming that disclosure could “harm diplomatic relations.”

Despite this, the released documents clearly show that UK-funded programmes are embedding digital-identity architecture and interoperability standards within foreign governments’ public-service systems.

These findings demonstrate that Whitehall has been developing and testing Digital ID infrastructure abroad through aid budgets and diplomatic partnerships, long before announcing similar plans for the UK itself.