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Comment by blfr | Hacker News Reader

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They were a well-regarded, non-partisan tech team. What was possibly "unreliable" about them?

My main recollection of 18F and the USDS is that they expanded the number of identity logins on VA.gov from one to three during their tenure.

During one of these transitions, I lost access to my account and had to go through a full re-validation process.

When the VA added ID.me last year as 4th identity provider, and mandated its use by March 4th 2025, it felt like an admission that private-sector providers outperform government-built identity systems.

Internal VA IT resisted years of 18F and USDS-led attempts to refactor the underlying COBOL and MUMPS systems — progress is necessary, but this was not the team to deliver it.

Login.gov is the default idp for the Social Security Administration, supports 200+ federal agencies for identity, and IRS was in the works to onboard Login.gov (to replace ID.me). They handle over 10 million monthly active users and 40 million monthly sign-ins across nearly 50 agencies and states. I would be interested in knowing why it could not serve as the sole idp for VA.gov, as there must be a reason, regardless of validity of that reason.

Appreciate the ground truth, this is enough for someone to dig further in VA from a journalism perspective.

> IRS was in the works to onboard Login.gov (to replace ID.me)

Has anyone agency completed replacing ID.me with Login.gov?

For that matter do any agencies that support both Login.gov and ID.me have a way for users to switch which one they use?

When the ssa.gov first started asking people who used username/password login to add one of Login.gov or ID.me, I picked ID.me because I already had an ID.me account for use with the IRS and did yet have a Login.gov account.

Since then I've gotten a Login.gov account and would prefer to use that with ssa.gov but there doesn't appear to be any way to set that up. There's nothing I can find in account settings to add another login method to an account.

Current guidance from the SSA login flow is to not use Login.gov if you already have an ID.me account. Identity provider transitions are fraught with peril, and I hesitate to provide guidance that potentially locks you out of the SSA website without any recourse or customer service. Therefore, for the time being, my guidance is to keep using your ID.me idp and login until an official update is provided. I will take a note to provide an update if updated guidance becomes available to me through any channel.

Correction: both Login.gov and Id.me will be the IDP options after March 4th changeover.

https://www.va.gov/?next=loginModal

They're career professionals and career professionals might be loyal to the state instead of the dear leader.

They didn't reliably side with Trump and Putin on all matters. The goal of the Trump administration is the destruction of the US government in order to dismantle it and offer it to billionaire buddies.

Government employees reliably wanted to serve the American people. Their non-partisanship is the entire problem. Please please stop being naive about Trump and thinking they or DOGE is doing anything above the board.

You mean they weren't loyal lackeys who would willingly break laws for the current regime.

Legality is another victim of politicization because now it's determined less by rules and more by your side's dedication to venue shopping and pushing judicial appointments. You need your own judges just as much as you need your own bureaucrats.

This is happening in other countries as well. It seems like people have found some critical exploits in the old separation of powers social technology.

“Entrenched bureaucracy” == a government not run top-to-bottom by political loyalists, like every administration in the modern era has had to deal with?

We got rid of the spoils system because it fucking sucked.

I'm still amazed by people who consider "politicization" as something done to the Trump administration rather than caused by it. Decades of peaceful transfers of power without wholesale purges, and now that's all changed for some mysterious reason.

I'm not amazed. The only people who consider that politicization was done to Trump administration are Trump supporters and people who have money to gain by ignoring Jan 6 or his constant attacks on anybody that doesn't support him. To be a Republican today is to be a hypocrite in name, action, deed, and as a key part of your core moral system.

Thats a load of bull. more like they are just doing Putin's bidding by dismantling the US federal government

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