That’s actually fascinating, because this official login solution exists, and it seems very nice: login.gov. It’s from the GSA which seems to be doing some good work.

I wonder how id.me differs, and how we haven’t centralized on one solution yet

Over 200 federal agency web properties have adopted login.gov. Social Security Administration recently adopted them as their primary identity provider (and appears to be phasing out id.me but I’m waiting on some ground truth to confirm that). Something is up with IRS as to why they went with with id.me, and someone has submitted FOIA requests to get more context.

login.gov is simply a user login mechanism. id.me does identity verification in many different ways.

Login.gov also supports identity verification: https://login.gov/help/verify-your-identity/how-to-verify-yo...

You record video message for example and state unemployment office can verify it against DL photo