The Digital Benefit Network's Digital Identity Community of Practice held a session to hear considerations from civil rights technologists and human-centered design practitioners on ways to ensure program security while simultaneously promoting equity, enabling accessibility, and minimizing bias.
This report analyzes the current state of digital identity in the United States, outlines challenges such as privacy concerns, fragmented systems, and lack of standards, and proposes policy and technology solutions to build a secure, interoperable, and user-friendly national digital identity framework.
Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF)
This simulator, created by the Joint Financial Management and Improvement Program (JFMIP), allows users to model program performance for a hypothetical government program, based on different identity verification decisions. The simulator illustrates concepts from the JFMIP report on payment integrity.
Joint Financial Management and Improvement Program (JFMIP)
The OECD's Recommendation on the Governance of Digital Identity, adopted on 8 June 2023, provides guidelines for member countries to establish secure and user-centric digital identity systems that enhance trust and facilitate access to online services.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
These guidelines provide technical requirements for federal agencies implementing digital identity services and are not intended to constrain the development or use of standards outside of this purpose. This guideline focuses on the use of federated identity and the use of assertions to implement identity federations. Federation allows a given credential service provider to provide authentication and (optionally) subscriber attributes to a number of separately-administered relying parties.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
This post argues that for the types of large-scale, organized fraud attacks that many state benefits systems saw during the pandemic, solutions grounded in cybersecurity methods may be far more effective than creating or adopting automated systems.
This 2023 presentation from the California Employment Development Department details the user personas the agency used to evaluate vendor proposals for a new identity proofing contract.
State of California Employment Development Department (EDD)
MyFile NYC is a digital platform that allows New York City residents experiencing homelessness to securely store, share, and manage vital documents with the Department of Homeless Services, streamlining the process of establishing eligibility for public benefits. This pilot, launched in 2022, aims to improve service access by reducing barriers like communication and documentation challenges, while allowing users control over their information.
My File NYC is a document storage and sharing website that provides New York City residents a safe place to store and share vital documents when applying for City services.
In this panel conversation from Better Identity Coalition’s 2022 policy forum “Identity, Authentication, and the Road Ahead” presenters from the General Services Administration, the Transportation Security Administration, the Consumer First Coalition, and the congressional branch, discuss government’s role in digital identity.
