Stakeholders urge America to consider digital identities critical infrastructure

America needs a “federal digital identity strategy” that recognizes credentials people can use online as “critical infrastructure, Persona Director of Government Affairs Will Wilkinson argues in a editorial for Fortune.

Wilkinson points out that close to half of states are currently or working towards issuing mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs) and state ID cards.

He points out that the recent White House Working Group on Digital Asset Markets report notes the importance of digital identity for the crypto industry.

“That’s great, but in an increasingly online world, problems of identity and trust pervade nearly every service and system, not just crypto networks,” writes Wilkinson. “Infrastructure-level problems demand infrastructure-level solutions. That begins with a federal framework for digital identity.”

Wilkinson is not advocating for a national ID card, he says, or doing away with physical credentials. The internet needs to be improved an identity layer that makes it more useful for people than its initial architecture as a network for computers allows, he argues. Getting that layer right, though, will mean making commitments “to openness, privacy, and the common good.”

An umpire to assess when those commitments are being upheld would help too, according to Congressional Representative Bill Foster (D-Ill.). Foster said during an Identity Week 2025 presentation that while NIST does a good job of setting standards for digital identity, but the nation needs a body to enforce them, Nextgov/FCW reports. The whole project is still at a point where a single major breach could set back public trust by decades.

Foster says he is working with Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) on bi-partisan legislation to make sure the digital IDs that do roll out are fit for purpose.

Their fitness is not academic, as America is steadily increasing the ways to use digital identity.

Login.gov Director Hanna Kim used similar language to Wilkinson in an address at Identity Week, calling identity a “foundational right” and arguing that America’s fraudulent benefits payments problem is “a serious national security risk.” The Federal News Network reports that Kim revealed that it has launched a cross-agency threat intelligence working group, which has met three times.

The U.S. government’s single sign-on (SSO) platform recently added support for biometric passports, and is working towards accepting mDLs, possibly by next March.

Hope among states

Two of those states with an active mDL program are Utah and California. The digital ID infrastructure is not yet treated as critical, however.

In Utah, the Office of Data Privacy has published an RFI as the state works to upgrade its digital identity ecosystem with more credentials and regulations, MLex reports.

Echoing Wilkinson, the state’s Chief Privacy Officer Christopher Bramwell told an audience at Identity Week 2025 that digital IDs are critical infrastructure.

The RFI specifies that Bramwell’s office is looking for a digital ID that provides individual control, interoperability and strong privacy protections. It closes October 6.

StateTech reported in May that Utah’s mDL provider, which is GET Group, wants to charge credential holders and the identity verification authority, which creates a demand problem given a lack of places to use it.

“Your existence is not a revenue source,” says Utah ODP Privacy Architect George McEwan, according to MLex.

Daniel C. Kim, who served as director of California’s Department of General Services under two governors, wonders in a column for GovTech why the Digital ID Framework developed by the state Department of Technology has not been made official California policy.

Kim makes the case that the Framework, launched in 2023, would allow the private sector to issue IDs that meet the requirements, including for privacy protection, established by the state. He compares the state’s “Cloud First” policy, which he says successfully used the same market structure to improve California’s digital infrastructure.

With a new state policy on digital ID possibly on the horizon, Kim hopes the government embraces a policy it already has written.

Article Topics

digital ID  |  digital ID infrastructure  |  digital identity  |  identity document  |  identity management  |  mDL (mobile driver's license)  |  United States