Login.gov

Login.gov is an accountability case about the difference between providing useful identity checks and truthfully claiming a defined level of assurance. The service sat between people seeking public benefits or records and agencies deciding whether to trust a digital identity. In that position, a standards label was not marketing shorthand. It was a representation about controls, a term in interagency agreements, an input to agency risk decisions, and a basis for public spending. The later addition of independently assessed Identity Assurance Level 2 capability is meaningful repair. It does not erase the need to account for what was claimed, billed, disclosed, and relied upon before that capability existed.