eVisas are replacing Biometric Residence Permits.
The option to select an eVisa when creating a new user profile will be added in a future Care Identity Management release. For now, Registration Authority users should continue choosing Biometric Residence Permit at the document selection stage, but enter additional details in the notes field.
Some employees have multiple active assignments in ESR. Previously, not all of an employee's assignments were being sent from ESR to their Digital Staff Passport. Only the employee's primary employment assignment was being sent.
ESR made changes on 10 January 2025 that mean all of a users active assignments are now sent to an employee's Digital Staff Passport.
If you use the Digital Staff Passport employer portal and you have a user with more than one active assignment, we'd like to find out about your experience using this new feature.
Preferably contact us before you share any credentials. We'll set up an online call with you and follow what you do, which will help us understand if the feature works for you.
Alternatively just let us know next time you have a user with multiple active assignments, and tell us if the feature has worked or if there were any problems. You can email us at england.dsp.ur@nhs.net
Up to and including Digital Staff Passport release 9.7 on 17 October 2024, we were publishing release notes to this news section of the website.
We've now created a separate area specifically for Digital Staff Passport releases. To view the latest releases to the service and how each affects the user experience, please go to our release hub.
There are now new dates for the removal of series 4, 5 and 6 smartcards from service:
You can read full details of this change in the updated deprecation notice.
Registration Authority Managers, Agents and Advanced Agents can use the reports functionality in Care Identity Management to identify older smartcards in their organisation.
Read how to use reports to find older smartcards.
You can also use the NHS England Diagnostic Tool to identify smartcard series.
Within the tool:
You'll then see the smartcard series number in the details shown.
For full details of what we're doing and why, read this deprecation notice.
If plans change between now and the dates shown above we'll update this page and the deprecation page.
If you have any questions, contact us at iamplatforms@nhs.net
Internal NHS England (previously NHS Digital) services have migrated to NHS CIS2 Authentication, but other services may not be migrated in time to meet current timescales.
The revised retirement date for CIS1 Authentication is 28 February 2027. As part of the deprecation, the service level for CIS1 Authentication will drop to Silver on 1 October 2025.
CIS1 Authentication was originally scheduled for retirement by September 2023. We gave suppliers an extra year to migrate to CIS2 Authentication and extended the retirement date to September 2024.
Now, NHS England applications have migrated to CIS2 Authentication or removed dependencies on CIS1 Authentication. While progress has been made again, it's clear that not all suppliers will complete the migration within the timeframe.
Out of concern for impacted NHS organisations, we intend to:
account for any suppliers who have not completed the migration to NHS CIS2 Authentication or have not completed the rollout of their changes to all sites, by continuing to support CIS1 Authentication, but at gradually reduced service levels starting from 1 October 2025
remove the SLA for CIS1 Authentication from 1 March 2026
continue to retire legacy versions of client software (and associated devices) that might increase the risk of security and/or operational impacts from these reduced service levels
retire and remove the CIS1 Authentication service by 28 February 2027, meaning it can no longer be used
Currently both CIS1 Authentication and NHS CIS2 Authentication are supported to a Platinum SLA - supported hours are 24 hours a day, 365 days a year with 99.9% availability (target maximum of 44 minutes of downtime per month).
On 1 October 2025:
we will reduce the support level for the CIS1 Authentication service to a Silver SLA
operational hours will remain 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, but support hours will be reduced to 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday and 99.5% availability (target maximum of 3.5 hours of downtime per month)
NHS CIS2 Authentication will continue to be run to Platinum SLA
On 1 March 2026:
no SLA will be in place for the CIS1 Authentication service, and any issues raised with the CIS1 Authentication service cannot be relied upon to be fixed.
NHS CIS2 Authentication will continue to be run to Platinum SLA
We are aiming to retire and remove CIS1 Authentication from operational service by 28 February 2027.
For more details, see the revised CIS1 Authentication deprecation notice.