Chris Messina is a community board member of the OpenID Foundation, long time advocate for citizens of the web, and prolific blogger on all things “open”.
Today in collaboration with Vivek Kundra, the nation’s first CIO, we are announcing a pilot program intended to enable individual citizens to login to government websites with their existing accounts — without revealing their password or personally identifying information — using OpenID and InfoCard technologies.
This is an important step in the Obama administration’s commitment to open, transparent, and participatory government.
First, it acknowledges and embraces existing, open technologies, rather than inventing their own (or worse, hiring independent contractors to do the same).
Second, this comes at a critical time in the history of OpenID, of which there are now well over 500 million OpenID-capable accounts in the wild, (even if few people realize that they already have one!). Given the wide deployment of this technology, it only makes sense that the government should leverage this wide potential userbase to facilitate interaction with its citizens.
Third, it is critical for the government and government agencies to develop solutions and adopt technologies that make it easier for modern citizens to engage with them, to exist competently alongside other social networking websites.
In other words, by embracing OpenID (and InfoCard), the government is helping to further establish the value of owning one’s own identity, and of having convenient, consistent, and privacy-protecting mechanisms in place to enhance and enable participation.
To make this more real, consider booking a campground on a state park’s website: do you really want to create yet another account (that you’ll probably never use again) just to reserve a campsite? Probably not.
To make this more personal: imagine searching the National Institute of Health’s website for information for a loved one who was recently diagnosed with cancer. You’d want the technology to get out of the way and serve your goals — who’d want to register for a new account when you just want to save your search progress (say, from a library kiosk) and resume it later (i.e. from home)?
It’s cases like this that begin to tease at the value of using existing accounts for low-security government interactions (at least to start). Like email, I expect to see this start with a slow, gradual adoption, and overtime, gain momentum and relevance.
To find out more about this pilot program, read the full press release and visit our OpenID for Government page.
September 9th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Congratulations to everybody who has been involved in making this happen!
September 10th, 2009 at 12:19 am
This is fantastic. Here’s to open government and the open web!
September 14th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Awesome. Make sure the crazies don’t spin this as some kind of socialist conspiracy theory.
September 21st, 2009 at 6:55 pm
It is here my most sincere congratulations to everybody who has been somehow involved in making this happen, especially the government personnel
March 15th, 2010 at 8:57 am
[...] gros travail est encore nécessaire avant de pouvoir arriver à un web social décentralisé, mais certains signes sont prometteurs. Il sera intéressant de refaire exercice l’an prochain ^pur mesurer les progrès [...]
March 15th, 2010 at 8:58 am
[...] maximum de développeurs et d’utilisateurs possible. Le gouvernement américain a par exemple approché la fondation OpenID(en) pour permettre un accès unifié aux différents service qu’il offre à ses [...]
May 29th, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Before everyone gets too excited about OpenID these important issues need to be addressed?
What legal rights do you have over your OpenID?
Do you own it in the eyes of the Law?
What about in Countries other than the US?
Can you sell, transfer or bequeath your OpenID to another person?
Under what terms and conditions and dictated by whom exactly?
What legal rights would they have?
What happens to your online IP when you die that has access controlled by OpenID?
Can an OpenID provider allocate my OpenID to another person without my consent?
Can OpenID block my account for any reason?
What would happen to my IP in such circumstances?
Do OpenID providers indemnify me against unathorised access to by data via OpenID insecurity?
Are the OpenID providers bound by any laws to prevent them accessing my OpenID account or data with access controlled by my OpenID?
August 2nd, 2010 at 5:51 pm
[...] a pilot project with NIH and related agencies using two of the open identity technology standards OpenID and Information [...]
September 1st, 2010 at 6:43 pm
1984 (book) here we go! Can you say Police State?
April 15th, 2011 at 3:56 pm
I hope google will disclose more detail on this incident, and details on how they work with US security department.thank youJack