I probably should have written this post a few months ago, but a friend reminded me that it is still relevant, even though many of us filed our taxes last week. As the number of federal employees drops, the time to get online with various agencies makes more sense. And for those of you that have so far resisted the effort to do this — and of course, it is an effort, even for the most technical and computer literate among us — now is the time to get online with the feds. If you have tried to call the IRS for example, or visit a local Social Security Administration (SSA) office (those that are still staffed), you will have to have a tremendous dose of patience.

I should state that getting online with the US government is not quite what it could be, and for that we should look to Estonia where they have been doing this really well for a number of years. The initial experience in getting on board was also somewhat daunting, but now every federal agency there has some form of online access using a single system.

Anyway, back home we have two different central authentication service providers, because why not? The two are ID.me and Login.gov. Not all agencies use both — such as the IRS, which only uses ID.me. But if you pay your taxes online through the EFTPS.gov service, and want to access your account with the SSA, you can authenticate with either one. The two providers have somewhat different processes to get your credentials verified and your account setup.

ID.me has had a lot of growing pains when it was first introduced several years ago. (I wrote about this for Avast’s blog here.) I would not recommend using ID.me if you can use Login.gov as a way into your accounts.

One additional caveat about the IRS. Every January you should be using your online account to request a filing PIN. This prevents anyone else from filing a return with your social and name. Make sure to put this PIN someplace where you will remember it when you do file several months later. you need to request a new PIN each year.

Still with me?

Once you sign up and prove who you are to the service(s) — and the effort isn’t trivial and can be frustrating — you can then create an online account with whatever federal (and in some limited circumstances, state and local) agencies you want to conduct your affairs with that supports the provider. And even if you aren’t old enough to start receiving SSA benefits, you should still have an account with them just to check and make sure your deposits over the years have been properly recorded.

Okay, one final caveat about setting up your accounts. You should protect your account with an additional authentication factor, and both Login.gov and ID.me offer numerous options. The one that I use is a USB hardware key (Google sells its Titan keys shown above, but there are other vendors if you would rather deal with someone else). If you go this route, you should buy at least two keys, and put them in different places (such as office and home). You and your spouse can share the same key if that works for you. After you login to either service, you are asked to insert the key in your computer or phone (or use its NFC radio) and press the blinking icon on the key to finish the login process. One authentication method you should NOT choose is to send a code via SMS to your phone.

Once you get a hardware key, you should augment your logins with it wherever you can. Google, Facebook, your bank, your insurance company, etc. Not all places that you’d like to use it support these keys, which is sad and frustrating. Some banks only support two different keys, which is annoying.

I understand that getting this all setup will take time, and working through the various user interfaces will try your patience. But once this is done, you can interact with the feds digitally, which is a Good Thing. And maybe someday we will approach the digital density that they have in Estonia.