That’s an issue Puerto Rico has been targeting with a digital ID initiative called IDEAL. In English, the acronym roughly translates to “electronically online accessible identity,” said Puerto Rico Chief Innovation and Information Officer Antonio Ramos Guardiola.
The IDEAL system is an application programming interface (API) layer that lets governments share information they already hold on a resident, with that person’s permission.
When someone requests a housing voucher, for example, the Department of Housing needs to know if they have outstanding debts, such as for child care or to the departments of Treasury or Health. In the past, a resident might have had to return with a stack of documents. Now, however, the Department of Housing could look up the person’s ID in the IDEAL system and find what it needs.
The resident would receive a text message telling them who’s searching for information on them using their ID, what agency the searcher is from and why they want the information. If the resident agrees, they would approve by entering their own personally identifying information to authorize approval. That lets the agency then search among partner agencies to find the relevant information, to allow the housing voucher process to proceed.
IDEAL isn’t just a tool for the public sector, either — Ramos Guardiola said he believes the government should let residents use the system to share information the government holds on them with private entities like banks.
“One of the responsibilities we have as the government is to drive the digital transformation, since we are custodians of most of the citizen and enterprise data,” Ramos Guardiola told Government Technology during the recent National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) Annual Conference.
Banks often require a lot of government-held information, such as a certificate of incorporation for opening a commercial account, address verification for opening a personal account, and confirmation that anyone seeking a loan isn’t currently in debt to the government.
Rather than trekking to a government office to get this paperwork or having to download and print tons of documents, would-be customers can hand their IDs to banks and grant them access to the needed information through IDEAL.
Puerto Rico also has a digital ID app called CESCO Digital which lets users store digital versions of their driver’s licenses, registry and even some vaccination information. The app also lets users take actions like paying toll booth fees and annual vehicle inspection dues.
The territory is also looking to make the app available for interoperability with various states’ digital IDs. That would, for example, allow a Floridian driver visiting Puerto Rico to use the app to present their state driver’s license, and a Puerto Rican visiting Florida to use the app there, too.
