They tried something like that in Germany, but they got it wrong in the details:

Once you elect to communicate via this government blessed email, you are basically forced to check that email everyday notwithstanding your ability (e.g. when your computer/internet breaks) as the communication is considered delivered once it hits your (e-)mail box.

For example if you are summoned to court (and it is a felony to not show up), I'd think I'd prefer snail mail for those communications, as I'd trust my "tech stack" of a physical mail box on the receiving side a bit more than some government blessed email provider.

That sounds more like mostly a technical problem. You could simply configure forwarding from your gov. email account to your personal one. You could create filters to only care about certain domains to prevent spam.

It's still a lot easier to check email than walk to a mailbox daily. But the best solution is probably to default to both email & mail such that the email can be send when the letter is sent but neither would be considered a delivered message until the letter itself was delivered.

Good point.

Also, once spammers/scammers get ahold of it (I give it ten minutes), you are truly screwed.

I think if you limited it to only sanctioned communications you'd limit this problem quickly (think only .gov email addresses can email it, for instance, and/or other sanctioned domains)

If we wanted to, we should provide two emails to the general public. A restricted communications one following the rules I suggest above, and perhaps a more general purpose one for those who want to use that, with the only requirement that you already signed up for the first one).

I know that's convoluted. It's just one idea of course. I think we could deal with this problem.

Also the gov being the gov, they could just mandate Google provide spam filter protections or something.

I think the Danish version of this, "E-boks", have been mandated for some years and it mostly works fine. There are a few issues now and then and it is difficult for the older population but I think that it overall have worked fine. And by far most people agree with it here.

Although this is not true email but a special message system that needs two factor auth to log in.

Huh? I check my paper mail box once per month.

>For example if you are summoned to court

Aren't such thing delivered under signature?

exactly. How would that work in an electronic setting?

This is not a pipe dream at all. Call your Congressional rep and ask for legislation to provide this. Asking only costs your time, and you're on the right track (USPS providing this service, so they can do in-person verifications). This would then enable more government services to move to email first for correspondence, but care would need to be taken that comms fall back to phone or physical mail for exceptions (for example, FCC should fall back to SMS and/or paper mail if email bounces back).

...and this is what you'll get back because I used to write responses like these for a congressional office for years:

Thank you toomuchtodo for writing to me about government services to move to email first for correspondence. As you know, I have always supported government accountability and efficiency, and will certainly consider this should legislation come up about it. Please continue to keep me informed about the issues that are important to you. Sincerely, your Congressional Representative.

> This is not a pipe dream at all. Call your Congressional rep and ask for legislation to provide this. Asking only costs your time, and you're on the right track (USPS providing this service, so they can do in-person verifications).

Do that, but go a little farther.

You should be able to register with the USPS to get a universal ID (UID), and then associate both a mailing address and an email address with that UID.

USPS would then provide both an email address and virtual mailing address that incorporate the UID. Email sent to that email address would forward to the real email address associated with the UID, and physical mail sent to the virtual mailing address would be delivered to the associated physical mailing address.

I'd like to see them also offer an ID verification service, that provides a way for you to verify to a third party that you control a particular UID. This could provide a robust account recovery mechanism for other services.

Right now, if an account at some service gets hijacked, or you simply forget or lose your credentials, recovery usually depends on SMS or on email. The problem with those is that they too can be hijacked, and their recovery also depends on SMS or email. You end up with a tangled mess of dependencies.

A way to fix this is to organize account recovery as a tree. At the root you have some service where recovery requires that you physically show up at their office and present proof of identity, such as a passport.

Then directly under the root you might have your main email account or your main mobile phone account. Account recovery for those would involve verifying your identity with the root.

Below those, you might have your social media accounts, your utility accounts, and so on. Recovery for those would involved verifying you via your mail email or main mobile number.

How you organize it is up to you. They key, though, is to have something at the top that you can always recover, and make everything else be ultimately recoverable through that. (I'd probably personally do a 5 level tree: root; domain registrars; main email; mobile phone; everything else).

USPS would be good for the root because they have offices all over the country. Most people can get to a USPS office without too much hardship. (Banks would also be a good option for root identity providers).

Agree entirely! https://login.gov already exists. Extend it with PKI and smartcards (Estonia National ID style [1]). Have USPS be a trust anchor as well as integrate with Login.gov as an identity provider, and so on.

[1] https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/id-card/

Not a pipe dream. I think it would be a marvelous public utility, and one that might keep the USPS a bit more solvent (think addons).

But...I think that most of us are familiar with how good the Government is at running these kinds of efforts.

That said, it is a quasi-private effort, and might actually be able to field a decent team.

Write your representatives, start a grassroots movement to get usps to offer email addresses, the future is created by those who show up.