Get in on California’s Identity Gateway, says chief information official

California’s Chief Information Officer and California Department of Technology (CDT) Director Liana Bailey-Crimmins wants more departments to plug into the state’s digital identity framework, as it moves forward with digital transformation.

Speaking at the December 2025 TechCA Forum on Emerging Technologies and Government Modernization, Bailey-Crimmins describes digital identity as a “key that reduces barriers,” and says California is leaving behind legacy systems in a push to embrace identity verification that adheres to data minimization standards.

“With California’s Digital Identity Gateway, residents control what they share and decide with whom and for what purpose,” she says. “There are no redundant checks, and no in-person verification.”

What is California’s Digital Identity Gateway?

California’s digital ID strategy describes the California Identity Gateway as “a CDT-built technology platform that facilitates the interaction between various digital entities (including state websites and identity and eligibility providers) for the purpose of securely sharing the information needed for identification and eligibility verification.” Identified as the state’s preferred service for accessing government services, it’s built on the OpenID Connect authentication protocol, “allowing eligibility providers and state agencies to trust that users are who they say they are, and allowing users to utilize a single sign on (SSO) with the Identity Provider to access services, benefits, and information from any integrated client agency across California.”

In the Digital ID Framework, it is illustrated as a filtration node that retrieves requested information from an identity provider and/or eligibility provider, then delivers only what is required to access the service in question.

Bailey-Crimmins says the Identity Gateway already enables transit discounts across certain California counties. But her bigger vision is for “one secure, simple identity that follows the resident and not the bureaucracy.”

“Industry plays an important role by providing scalable identity proofing, privacy-enhancing technologies, secure credential issuance, and interoperability,” she says. “I want to see more departments connect their systems to the Identity Gateway because no survivor, student, veteran, disabled person, or resident should wait to prove who they are when they need help most. This is how we build trust and how we deliver government at the speed people live their lives.”

Article Topics

California  |  California’s Digital Identity Gateway  |  data sharing  |  digital government  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  mDL (mobile driver's license)  |  OpenID Connect  |  trust framework