Or you could just do what other countries do, regulate it and make it a government function.
I don't have a good solution for the recommendation system like this. Maybe we wouldn't need it in the first place if we didn't do so much debt financing of stuff. Or maybe it needs to be less centralized: applying for one loan, you need to show payment history on a few other loans, etc. But I just don't see a centralized government run agency as the solution.
I'm quite happy with the approach that Switzerland has taken. Firstly, there are no credit scores or credit reports. Instead, there is a well-defined and regulated way to collect on overdue bills: The creditor requests debt collection from the state debt collection agency. At this point, collectees may decide to pay, to object to the prosecution or not to react. Objecting leads to a defined legal process where the creditor must prove the debt, and the collectee can defend themselves. In case of no reaction, authorities may proceed to seize assets.
As for the reporting, the debt collection agency will only keep a file on people against whom a collection request has been filed, and only make it available to the person in question and entities with a qualified interest in it. In practice this means that when renting a flat or getting credit, you request your own (empty) record and submit it to the landlord/bank in question. The agency is also responsible to expunge entries from that record after a defined time. And since responsibility for collection lies with a state agency, there's very little risk of the kind of harrassment you hear of in horror stories from the states.
The implementation has room for improvement: records are kept locally, tied to the state you live in and there's no immediate way to get online confirmation. Those are details though, that could be fixed in a clean implementation of the same system.
But we also have giant for-profit companies aggregating giant databases with little to no oversight, and up until recently no ability to access your own data for free, and still today no straightforward, across-the-board, means to appeal bad data, or collect damages from it (or from leaks of it).
Even with the terrible things associated with the no-fly list there is a TSA appeals process and a court system to challenge it. Do you know how you correct mistakes in your Equifax-TransUnion-Experian composite credit score? You mostly don't, and you most likely can't take them to court, because they think you are bound to arbitration.
I don't know if there is a good solution here either, but at least a government-run solution would have to be accountable to the people as citizens/constituents (even if it would still likely be in the pocket of the banks).
Sorry, that's not true at all. I went to Experian late last week to set up a fraud alert because of the Equifax breach, they showed me my credit report and had a button to mark things that were factually incorrect. I did so and submitted it. They did some sort of investigation and removed the data because they couldn't verify that it was correct. It was as easy as filling out an online form. (Actually, I think I had to call about 1 particular item, but it was handled over the phone.)
From the article.
It does look, from the snippet, like they aren't quite the same. I don't yet have an opinion on that, specifically the bit about data being erased after it has been settled. That's pretty different.
I shall see what I can find. It may change my opinion. Thanks again.
I don't see the point you're trying to make. If we're going by "who has made the news for hacks lately", the private sector is by far the worse choice.
Also, OPM does not get to decide if you have standing to sue them. That's up to parts of the government so far removed from OPM they might as well be a different entity entirely.