If you're filing your taxes on the Internet, Uncle Sam needs to know you're not a dog

As always, thank you for subscribing and amplifying Civic Texts, which will not be sustainable without you. Many thanks to everyone who has supported my work, particularly folks who have subscribed to memberships since our soft launch in April. 

Please keep sharing these newsletters on social media and forwarding them on email. Organic growth by word of mouth and social recommendations is incredibly helpful. You can always write to me with questions, comments, tips, features, or other feedback at alex@governing.digital or call/text at 410-849-9808. 

Good morning from Washington, where I'm getting my head around the concept of becoming 48 years old in a few days. While age is is a state of mind tied to an annual rotation around the Sun, I'm feeling the accumulating weight of those years more.

For decades now, figuring online privacy, security, and identity have been the triumvirate of technology policy for governments around the world who need to use the Internet to deliver information and services.

Back in 1993, Peter Steiner famously drew a cartoon in the New Yorker observing “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Today, online commerce and digital services have made it essential for every website and app to not only ensure that someone is not only a human, but that that they are a particular individual.

Today, I want to highlight a digital government milestone that is likely to have an impact on every American in the years to come.

Back in 2017, after the federated approach to online identity piloted under the Obama administration had not panned out, the federal government launched a new website called Login.gov.

In October 2024, Caroline Nihill reports at Fedscoop, Login.gov will now authenticate our identity using facial recognition technology, matching a "selfie" with a government-issued ID.

That means Login.gov is now able to provide identity assurance up to the National Institute of Standards and Technology's "Identity Assurance Level 2" standard, which requires that people using a given platform provide proof of their identity remotely or in person.

“Proving your identity is a critical step in receiving many government benefits and services, and we want to ensure we are making that as easy and secure as possible for members of the public, while protecting against identity theft and fraud,” said GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan, in a press release. “Login.gov’s new IAL2-compliant product offering is another milestone in ensuring agencies have a wide variety of strong identity verification options.”

Previously, only one entity in the United States was able to deliver that standard of identity – a private sector company called ID.me.

ID.me has been playing a key role providing identity verification for state and federal agencies to access various services, from unemployment to the high-profile Direct File for taxes at the Treasury Department.

(Long-time subscribers to this newsletter might recall my angst about federal agencies requiring the use of biometric data and Social Security numbers for people who wishes to make or check on Freedom of Information Act requests online. Pushback did not change the imposition of a requirement that's not in the law.)

This week's milestone comes half a year after the General Services Administration – which administers Login.gov, along with a host of other websites, programs, and services across the federal government – announced a pilot of facial matching for online verification.

What's generally gone under-appreciated in 2024, however, is that the GSA has adopted an extraordinarily important offline approach: Americans who can't get the facial matching to work with an ID will be able go to thousands of U.S. Postal Service offices around the country for help.

Choosing to build digital public infrastructure that's integrated with one of the few federal agencies expressly enumerated in the Constitution is a stroke of brilliance that could have longterm impact on how and where the Postal Service plays a role in 21st century government.

In the years to come, I hope the federal government thinks through how to invest in reforming, rebuilding, and renewing the Postal Service so that it can continue to play a fundamental role in connecting Americans to one another, to information, and to the government that serves us.

Given that the Postal Service has been losing money for over a decade now and has needs that investment to keep delivering on its mission, that's an opportunity for change the next administration and Congress should build on. I hope they start by celebrating the role that postal offices will be playing in offline identity verification if we can't get Login.gov to work when we, say, go to renew our passposts online.

If we see that future play out, don't forget that later innovation is finally possible because the civil servants and appointed officials in our government finally figured out the secure authentication of online identity in 2024.

Our government of the people can still figure out how to do big, interesting things if we empower our fellow Americans to adapt, improvise, and overcome all of the challenges modernizing complex institutions pose, building out new open services with the communities they serve.

For instance, the Postal Service could enable us to digitally preview our mail through email, a website, or a mobile app on out smartphones. They could call it "informed delivery," and roll out the ability for us to electronically sign for packages, instead of having to be at home.

If that sounds attractive, I have some good news on that front: the Postal Service launched informed delivery in 2018! But if you haven't heard about it or begun using it, I don't blame you: our government of the people is still not as effective at engaging and informing the people as it should be in 2024, as we saw throughout the pandemic and now during hurricanes of lies. We need the next administration to do better.

I've love to see the Postal Service explore providing every American with a "digital P.O. box" at birth which we can rely on, perhaps coupled with a public email address for official communications from state, local, and federal agencies.

But to deliver on that vision, the federal government will need to hire the Americans postal offices will need to be serve as a public face for us when we need help with accessing information, sending mail, registering for benefits, or troubleshooting those systems.

That will require celebrating civil service and the people who reduce administrative burdens at a societal level, combating the anti-democratic messaging from folks who demonize "unelected bureaucrats" or the "deep state," including every win along the way.

The Postal Service is a natural place to focus those efforts, given the remit Congress has given it in law and the deep community connections Americans have to the institution, along with the strong feelings we have about when and how we get our mail!

"The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress, and supported by the people. The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities. "

For centuries, those "postal services" has meant the physical mail, faithfully delivered by horse, plane, boat, or neighborhood postman. In the next century, we must think about delivering packets over networks, not just packages over roads.

The unofficial motto of the Postal Service is well-known: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

Less so is an inscription on the Smithsonian Institution's National Postal Museum, here in the District of Columbia: "The Letter" was written by Dr. Charles W. Eliot, former president of Harvard University, and then modified by President Woodrow Wilson before the following text was engraved into the granite of the Washington Post Office.

Messenger of Sympathy and Love
Servant of Parted Friends
Consoler of the Lonely
Bond of the Scattered Family
Enlarger of the Common Life
Carrier of News and Knowledge
Instrument of Trade and Industry
Promoter of Mutual Acquaintance
Of Peace and of Goodwill Among Men and Nations.

In 2025, let's hope for a new line, online: "Authenticator of Identity."