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Let people reuse verified facts across public services with consent, selective disclosure, logs, appeal rights, and paper alternatives so paperwork falls without building a surveillance ID.
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AI-researched, unverifiedLast Reviewed
Jul 6, 2026
Cited Sources
12
What is failing, what we would change, and the conclusion we are willing to defend.
Government asks people to prove the same facts again and again. A veteran proves veteran status to one office, then another. A disabled person proves disability status to an agency, then a transit program, then a school, then a tax benefit. A small business proves it exists. A student proves enrollment. A worker proves eligibility. A family proves income and address for benefits that already know the answer somewhere else in government.
That repetition is not just annoying. It is lost time, missed benefits, fraud exposure, privacy risk, and a quiet transfer of administrative work onto the public.
The Innovation Party supports Verified-Once Public Services: a consent-based trust layer that lets people reuse verified facts across public services without creating a national tracking system. The standard should prove the minimum fact needed, for the specific purpose authorized, with a receipt, a log, a revocation path, and an appeal if the proof is wrong.
Establish a federal verified-once service standard for reusable facts: identity, address, income range, household status, disability status, veteran status, student status, licenses, permits, work eligibility, business registration, and program eligibility.
Use plural technical rails, including Login.gov accounts, mobile driver's licenses, verifiable credentials, agency attestations, paper records, in-person verification, and community navigator channels. No single wallet, vendor, biometric method, or identifier should become mandatory for basic public access.
Require selective disclosure by default. A service that only needs to know "over 18," "resident of this county," or "currently enrolled" should not receive a full license, transcript, Social Security number, or case file.
Build consent receipts for every reuse: who requested the proof, which fact was shared, for what purpose, for how long, under what legal authority, and how the person can revoke future access.
Create evidence-exchange APIs that let agencies verify facts at a person's request instead of forcing the person to download, print, upload, notarize, and re-submit records the government already issued.
Ban the surveillance version: no universal public-service tracking number, no centralized cross-program dossier, no hidden secondary use, no data fishing, and no denial based on an unseen credential match.
Pair reuse with correction and appeal rights. If a verified fact is wrong, stale, missing, or mismatched, the person should get the source, the rule path, the fix route, the deadline, and a human fallback.
Publish conformance tests and equity audits so reusable proof lowers burden without excluding people who lack smartphones, stable addresses, English fluency, credit histories, camera access, or trust in digital identity systems.
This is not a national-ID pitch. It is the opposite design principle: prove less, expose less, repeat less, and leave people with more control. The country already has pieces of the rail. NIST has modern digital-identity guidelines and mobile driver's license work. Login.gov provides shared authentication and identity verification, including in-person pathways. The CASES Act and OMB guidance already require digital access and consent forms for Privacy Act records. OMB's digital-first service guidance pushes agencies toward simple, secure, and integrated public services. GAO has documented both the promise and the unfinished work.
Verified-once service turns those pieces into a right people can feel. When the state already knows a fact, it should not make a person prove it from scratch unless there is a specific reason. When the state reuses a fact, the person should know, consent, correct, revoke, and appeal.
Turn frustration into useful pressure.
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