[US centric] It feels like we're almost there between usps.gov and login.gov, someone at USDS just needs to make the equity and digital access case to get the funding to build out the app. The current administration has already expressed its position on federal service delivery improvements [1], and frankly, USDS/18F has a track record of crushing it. This would go hand in hand with the USPS slowly making its way to being a meatspace trust anchor/identity proofing|credentialing provider [2]; problem with your email account? Get help in person at your local USPS.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-action...

[2] https://www.cfr.org/report/solving-identity-protection-post-...

What about starting with a public library?

120 year email + static hosting tied to library card.

Start with one branch or small system, scale from there.

Could reasonably be managed per branch with central support orgs. I guess most of them have a server room or colo or similar with a couple U free.

I see where you're coming from, but it would also be an extreme liability. For example, imagine companies demanding that you sign in with only your uniquely-identifiable government email address so they can better track you. The necessary technical qualities to resist such attacks (eg allowing any user to generate a bunch of additional nyms) will never be considered in make-everything-legible government thinking. Social security numbers and drivers license numbers are already abused by surveillance companies, and so the last thing we need is another government-issued identifier without something like a US GDPR to prevent its abuse.

Also, the kind of long term stable online identity you're desiring can already be had by registering your own domain name.

I think government email services would be very risky, both in a legal sense and in a cybersecurity sense.

You can have government authentication without too many issues, though. The EU has a digital login system that's federated (EIDAS) and your government should never have to retract your ID unless you die. Some implementations use physical smart cards to sign in, others use usernames/passwords+apps/2fa. The system is currently intended only for official government business, but under the hood most systems use something close to OAuth2 so it should be possible to modify the system to allow generic logins.

The downside of such a system is that the using the same authentication for government grants and your social media makes it very easy to phish people. This increases the security requirements of the system significantly, which in turn make the system very annoying to use. The authentication mechanism also allows the government to track exactly what services you use and when.

Personally, I'd much rather see OpenID return. The ability to pick an identity provider and log in would allow for multiple accounts and the ability to control your own data.

Alternatively, wide-spread use of something like https://irma.app/ would be even better. This allows for decentralised identity that you can take with you, just like a regular ID. It also allows for exposing only scoped data (ie "is this person of drinking age" rather than "what's this person's birthdate").

Which government? US federal? State? County? City?

Part of the fun of the internet is that it is really international so I'd expect it to interoperate with Canada, France, Ukraine, etc. What if people from Barcelona want a Catalan e-mail address?

Social security numbers get wrongly revoked and you often end up having to sue the US government to get any redress.

Why in the world do you want them to host your email?

Perhaps a little better, but anything the government does is always subpar

Whatever email server/system the government created would be so bad no one one would use it.