An official website of the United States government
An official website of the United States government
18F, which is part of the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Service, is building an authentication platform to make online interactions with the U.S. government simple, efficient and intuitive. This platform will be a service shared by agencies to streamline logging in and to allow the public to securely access personal information and federal government services.
Federal agencies will be able to integrate our platform with their existing services as they choose.
Our goal is to shorten the amount of time it takes to work with the government by reducing paperwork the public has to fill out and forms the government has to process.
In doing so, we’re committed to ensuring individuals control their own information in a highly secure manner with a delightful user experience.
We also believe that a shared authentication platform will reduce the burden of operations, maintenance and security oversight across the government. This platform addresses concerns that we’ve heard from IT teams across the federal government:
The process of integrating identity for government sites should take days, not months.
Security updates and identity fraud alerts should arrive in seconds, not weeks.
Agencies should be able to concentrate IT resources on mission-specific operations, not basic authentication tech support.
This platform is being built in the open, using agile methods. We’re working iteratively and testing what we build with the public as we go.
This project builds on groundwork laid by the National Institute for Standards in Technology, the Cybersecurity National Action Plan and the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service. We’re working hand-in-hand with organizations across the government and in the private sector to implement best practices and emerging standards in secure, privacy-protecting authentication.
We’ll be publishing more information as the project advances. If you’re interested in learning more or helping us deliver this platform for millions of Americans, please send us a note at 18F@gsa.gov.