One optional front door
Built on Login.gov, the account would let residents see eligible programs, applications, notices, case status, and appeals without merging every agency into one database.
Delivery & capacity · Chapter 27
One Door Into Government
An optional Public Services Account, ask-once data, measurable service guarantees, assisted access, appeal continuity, and a hard privacy firewall.
Administrative burden is a policy outcome
People experience government as forms, queues, passwords, notices, documents, and appeals.
GAO reports that OMB estimated 10.5 billion public hours spent on federal information collections in FY2023. OIRA’s June 2026 inventory listed 11.48 billion annual burden hours across active collections. The chapter calls this administrative friction a “time tax” and measures non-take-up alongside improper payments.
Prefill with purpose-limited sharing
When law authorizes it and the user consents, information already verified by one program can prefill another application. Access logs and revocable consent make the sharing visible.
In-person and assisted service remain rights
The account is optional. Postal facilities, Social Security offices, libraries, phone channels, and other assisted pathways remain part of delivery.
Publish actual processing performance
Each major service would publish expected processing times, backlog, appeal reversals, and missed service guarantees rather than reporting only agency-wide averages.
Improper payments + eligible-but-unserved
A program is not successful merely because it pays few ineligible claims if eligible people cannot get through the process. The dashboard pairs integrity and access metrics.
Benefits data do not become an enforcement dossier
The book requires purpose limitation and a statutory firewall so service data cannot be repurposed for criminal or civil immigration enforcement without judicial process specified by law.
Benefit Cliff Smoother
Compare abrupt eligibility losses with a graduated phase-out.
Move annual wages from $0 to $80,000. The orange dashed curve is a deliberately simplified cliff-prone program stack inspired by Chapter 19's overlapping-phase-out example. The teal curve applies one smooth withdrawal schedule. Neither line is a state-specific eligibility calculation.
Modeled support, cliff-prone$0
Modeled support, graduated$0
Next $1,000 modeled benefit withdrawal0% / 0%cliff-prone / graduated
Cliff-prone illustrative stackGraduated phase-out
Service guarantee & time-tax dashboard
Translate paperwork time into household and system burden.
Current annual time tax12.0 hours
Illustrative redesigned process7.2 hours
Time returned4.8 hours
| Measure | Published figure | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Federal information-collection burden | 10.5 billion hours · FY2023 | OMB estimate cited by GAO; includes business and individual paperwork, not benefits applications alone. |
| Eligible federal benefits not claimed | More than $140 billion / year | 2023 estimate cited by OMB and GAO; administrative burdens are one contributor, not the only cause. |
| V26 dashboard | User-defined illustration | Multiplies a visitor’s service events by hours per event, then applies an assumed burden reduction. It is not a federal forecast. |
The proposal in brief
Chapter framework
Text below is transcribed from the first edition, with only print-layout hyphenation removed.
Goal
A government a person has to tell something only once, that answers within a published time, and that never becomes a surveillance tool.
Instrument
An optional Public Services Account built on Login.gov with in-person verification; published service guarantees; ask-once data sharing authorized by statute with purpose limits; revocable consent and access logs; benefits continued during appeals; never-only-digital service; measurement of both improper payments and eligible-but-unserved rates; harmonized program definitions.
Who pays
Within the digital government row of Appendix E; savings from reduced duplication are not counted.
Who implements
The Department of Digital Government and Public Administration builds the platform; each agency remains responsible for its own services; the Social Security Administration, the Postal Service, and libraries provide in-person help.
Legal vehicle
Federal statute for data-sharing authority and purpose limits; Amendment Five, Sections 2 and 4, entrenches the use restriction and human review.
Principal risk
A breach or a misuse of account data for enforcement destroys trust, and the people who most need services stop using the account.
Measure of success
Take-up of major benefits among eligible people; median processing times against published guarantees; the share of applications prefilled; appeal reversal rates; account-related data breaches and purpose-limitation violations.
Failure trigger
Any confirmed use of account data outside its statutory purposes should trigger an automatic suspension of the relevant data-sharing authority until the inspector general certifies corrective action.
The Strongest Counterargument & the Author's Response
Best case against
A single account that makes services easier to use can also become a uniquely valuable surveillance and enforcement system if data are breached, repurposed, or shared outside the benefit purpose.
The author's response
The chapter makes purpose limitation a design requirement rather than a privacy notice: sharing is statutory and logged, consent can be revoked, service cannot be digital-only, and confirmed out-of-purpose use suspends the relevant sharing authority until an inspector general certifies correction.
What remains uncertain
No identity system can eliminate breach risk; trust depends on enforceable limits and demonstrable compliance over time.
Evidence & sources