The US Still Has No National Digital ID, So OMB Orders Agencies Onto Login.gov Within Two Years
On 31 August 2026 the White House budget office told federal agencies to make Login.gov the default way Americans sign in to government services. Memo M-26-18 gives agencies two years to offer Login.gov on every public-facing site in scope, and one year for the highest-traffic services. Commercial identity providers such as ID.me and CLEAR are allowed only by exception. Defence, intelligence and national security systems are exempt.
It’s the closest thing Washington has to a national digital identity policy. The United States has no national ID card and no state-issued digital ID. What it has is a patchwork: a GSA login service, a private company running identity checks for the tax agency, and driver’s licences issued by fifty states.
Login.gov, after a rough start
GSA launched Login.gov in 2017. By August 2026 it reported more than 180 million user accounts, more than 500 million sign-ins a year and more than 700 sites and services across 54 federal agencies and states.
Its record isn’t clean. In March 2023 GSA’s inspector general found that officials had misled customer agencies, telling them in 18 agreements between 2018 and 2022 that Login.gov met the federal standard for strong identity proofing, known as IAL2. It didn’t, because it had no biometric check. Agencies had been billed more than $10 million under those agreements. GAO reported in June 2025 that Login.gov only offered proofing aligned with federal guidelines from October 2024. Between fiscal 2020 and 2023, agencies spent about $209 million on commercial identity tools and $32.5 million on Login.gov.
By July 2026, GAO said GSA had carried out all but one of its recommendations. The one still open: GSA has no time frames for fixing technical problems agencies report.
ID.me and the IRS
The biggest exception is the IRS. In early 2022 it dropped a requirement that taxpayers take a selfie with ID.me after bipartisan criticism, and promised a Login.gov option. In January 2026 it awarded ID.me a contract worth up to $1 billion running to 2030. Online IRS services still need an ID.me account. ID.me says it serves 21 federal and 50 state agencies.
The new memo pushes the other way. Unless an agency gets an exception, new accounts default to Login.gov.
Licences, not IDs
At the airport, identity is state-run. REAL ID enforcement started on 7 May 2025, when TSA said 81% of travellers had compliant ID. Since February 2026 travellers without it can pay a $45 fee to be verified another way. Mobile driver’s licences from a growing list of states, Colorado added in August 2026, are accepted at more than 250 TSA checkpoints. In June 2025 the administration dropped Biden-era plans to promote mobile licences for online identity checks.
How the US compares
Most rich democracies have gone further. Every EU member state must offer citizens a digital identity wallet by 24 December 2026. Denmark and Estonia have had national digital IDs for years. Britain is the exception that proves how hard this is politically: it announced a national digital ID in September 2025 and scrapped it in July 2026.
The American approach avoids the political fight over a national ID by never having one. The cost is duplication. Agencies have paid for identity checks several times over, through different vendors, and citizens hold separate accounts for taxes, benefits and health. The Login.gov memo is an attempt to get most of the benefit of a single login without calling it an ID. Its two-year deadline, and the IRS exception, will show how far that gets.