Though Freedom of Information Act requests to the tax agency can still be filed through FOIA.gov, the mail, by fax, or even in person, the IRS’s decision to point online filers to ID.me — whose facial verification technology has, in the past, drawn scrutiny from Congress — has raised some advocates’ eyebrows

Alex Howard, who directs the Digital Democracy Project and also serves on the FOIA Advisory Committee hosted out of the National Archives, said in an email to FedScoop that language on the IRS website seems to encourage ID.me use for faster service. It also doesn’t make significant references to FOIA.gov, a separate governmentwide portal that agencies are supposed to work with by law, he said. 

“While modernizing authentication systems for online portals is not inherently problematic, adding such a layer to exercising the right to request records under the FOIA is overreach at best and a violation of our fundamental human right to access information at worst, given the potential challenges doing so poses,” Howard said. 

The IRS defended its use of the service in responses to FedScoop questions, noting the other ways people can file FOIA requests and that the tool is only required of those seeking to interact with their public records electronically. The agency also said that ID.me follows National Institute of Standards and Technology guidelines for credential authentication services.

“The sole purpose of ID.me is to act as a Credential Service Provider that authenticates a user interested in using the IRS FOIA Portal to submit a FOIA request and receive responsive documents,” a spokesperson for the agency said. “The data collected by ID.me has nothing to do with the processing of a FOIA request.”

The IRS website currently directs people trying to access the agency’s online FOIA portal to use ID.me, which describes itself as a “digital passport” that “simplifies how individuals prove and share their identity online.” According to one IRS page, the “IRS Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Public Access Portal now uses a sign-on system that requires identity verification.” Those hoping to access online FOIA portal accounts created before June 2023 also must register for ID.me, the site states. 

The ID.me login page directs users to the FOIA portal, stating that those who can’t verify their identity can try visiting the ID.me help page or pursue alternative options. From there, another page tells users to try “another method” for submitting a FOIA. 

The system requires users to upload a picture of their ID: They can choose between taking a selfie and using biometric facial verification software that compares the image to their ID — or wait for a video appointment to confirm their identity. 

The system also appears to prompt users to share their Social Security number and includes terms of service that discuss the handling of biometric data. Two FedScoop reporters tried registering with the system: one had their expired identification rejected and had to attempt again with a passport, while the other’s driver’s license could not be “read” the first time but was accepted during a second attempt in combination with the video selfie. Both FedScoop reporters later received a letter, by mail, notifying them that their personal information was used to access an IRS service using ID.me.

What an ID.me scan looks like when signing into the IRS’s FOIA portal.

The IRS spokesperson said that the collection of a Social Security number is related to the digital authentication process, not the processing of the FOIA request itself, and biometric information is not retained by the IRS. 

“The IRS requires ID.me to delete the selfie and biometric information within 24 hours for taxpayers who verify using the self-service process,” the spokesperson said, adding that “ID.me is also required to delete any video chat recording within 30 days for taxpayers who choose to verify using the video chat pathway.” 

An ID.me spokesperson said in an email to FedScoop that no state or local agency uses the system for identity verification or as authentication for FOIA portals.  

The FOIA portals for the Treasury Department and Social Security Administration do use ID.me, the company spokesperson noted, but both agencies seem to provide more information on alternative submission options to submit requests online. ID.me referred additional questions regarding the IRS’s use of the company’s FOIA portal to the tax agency. Treasury did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

The Social Security Administration offers both ID.me and Login.gov — another government-run ID service — as options to log into its FOIA portal, FOIAXPress Public Access Link. Like the IRS, the SSA said in response to FedScoop questions that mail, fax, email and FOIA.gov are alternatives to filing FOIAs. A Social Security number is not required for accessing FOIAXpress, though it appears to be required for signing into ID.me, which some users might be using to file FOIA requests. 

“In the scenario where a customer uses their ID.me account to access FOIAXpress PAL, the customer selects this sign in option on the login page and is redirected to a webpage on ID.me’s website,” an agency spokesperson said. “If the customer creates an account in this session, ID.me retains info on the registration event in their records.

They continued: “Upon successful account creation, the user is routed back to SSA’s website and allowed access to FOIAXpress PAL. SSA and ID.me retain info on the transaction in our respective records.”

“Submitting a Social Security Number to ID.me is related to the digital identity authentication process; generally it is not required for the FOIA process,” the IRS spokesperson added. 

Albert Fox Cahn, a privacy-focused attorney who directs the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, expressed concerns about the IRS’s use of ID.me. “This isn’t just creepy and discriminatory, it might break federal law,” he said in a statement to FedScoop. “Under FOIA, public records belong to the public, and no one should have to hand over their biometric data just to see the records they’re entitled to access.” 

The use of ID.me by the government has sparked concerns in the past. In 2022, some members of Congress accused the company of downplaying wait times and misleading people about the way its facial recognition technology worked. The company, meanwhile, has defended its practices, including its work on fighting fraud during the pandemic.

Matt Bracken contributed to this article.

This story was updated June 11, 2024, to update Alex Howard’s professional affiliation.

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The request for information, released Thursday, asks for comments on advancements in existing AI tools and on emerging AI technologies that can benefit the financial sector. The RFI has specific callouts for information on the use of AI in financial products and services, risk management, capital markets, internal operations, customer service, marketing and regulatory compliance. 

“Treasury is proud to be playing a key role in spurring responsible innovation, especially in relation to AI and financial institutions. Our ongoing stakeholder engagement allows us to improve our understanding of AI in financial services,” Under Secretary for Domestic Finance Nellie Liang said in a statement. “The Biden administration is committed to fostering innovation in the financial sector while ensuring that we protect consumers, investors, and our financial system from risks that new technologies pose.”

Treasury listed 19 questions, plus numerous follow-ups, for respondents within its RFI, including: asking for feedback on any AI models that financial institutions are currently using; whether AI use cases differ within institutions; what barriers small banks face in AI deployment; how AI has benefited low-to-moderate income consumers and/or underserved individuals and communities; the extent to which AI models are developed in-house, by third parties or via open-source code; and how industry is applying risk management frameworks to AI use.

During remarks Thursday at the Financial Stability Oversight Council Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Financial Stability in Washington, D.C., Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen touted the release of the RFI as a way of “continuing our stakeholder engagement to improve our understanding of AI in financial services.” Yellen also announced a future roundtable discussion, convened by Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office, on the benefits and challenges of AI use for insurers. 

“FSOC will continue its efforts to monitor AI’s impact on financial stability, facilitate the exchange of information, and promote dialogue among financial regulators,” Yellen said. “Given how quickly AI technology is developing, with fast-evolving potential use cases for financial firms and market participants, scenario analysis could help regulators and firms identify potential future vulnerabilities and inform what we can do to enhance resilience.”

Much of Treasury’s RFI is informed by the agency’s previous work on AI, including a March report that sounded the alarm on AI-specific cybersecurity risks to the financial sector. Just last month, the department issued a national strategy for combating terrorism and other illicit financing, which called out the benefits AI might have in winning that fight.

Closer to home, Treasury has experimented with its own AI use cases, while also engaging in public-private partnerships to ensure that smaller financial institutions have the same defensive AI capabilities as the country’s biggest banks. 

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For Sarah Nur, Treasury’s chief information security officer and associate CIO for cyber, that arcade-style battle to protect federal networks from adversarial threats is “nonstop.”

AI has made it “a lot easier” for “unsophisticated threat actors … to create these attack scenarios,” Nur said, “so that they can go ahead and launch and play around in our current infrastructure.”

Speaking Tuesday at a Scoop News Group-produced GDIT event in Washington, Nur and other federal cyber officials spoke of the proliferation of AI-fueled cyberattacks and how much more critical coordination and information-sharing has become as use of the technology among amateur hackers has surged.     

Cynthia Kaiser, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, said she’s seen “a crop of adversaries who are becoming at least mildly better” at their craft due to AI. The technology eases hackers’ ability to perform basic scripting tasks and identify coding errors, Kaiser said, while deepfakes are leveraged in social engineering campaigns and increasingly refined spearphishing messages.

“A beginner hacker can go to the intermediate level,” she said, “and even the most sophisticated adversaries can be more efficient.”

Gharun Lacy has also observed a leveling up among threat actors in his role as deputy assistant secretary for cyber and technology security in the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Those adversaries are “using AI as an amplifier,” bettering their best skills as a result. 

“Do you have a threat actor that is extremely proficient in human engineering? Then they’re going to get better at human engineering,” Lacy said. “That phishing email will now call you by a nickname that you had in high school.” 

The Treasury Department is especially susceptible to this onslaught of new-age threats given its role as the federal government’s sanctions arm, Nur said, not to mention the fact that the financial industry is one of the most targeted critical infrastructure sectors. Hackers today can simply look up a CVE, plug it into an AI system and ask it to provide “an undetected attack scenario that I can utilize,” Nur said, noting that packages of this kind on the dark web are “ready to go.”

“I heard someone say ‘fight AI with AI.’ I get what that means,” Nur said, “and I think that’s a very key concept. We really have to look at leveraging AI to quickly detect these anomalies and any kind of fraud or unusual suspicious activity.”

The silver lining for federal security officials is that AI still provides defenders with a decided advantage over attackers in cyberspace. The key to maintaining that advantage, they say, is doubling down on coordination with public and private-sector partners.

Kaiser said the use of large language models to “more rapidly draft text” for interagency memos and private-sector alerts represents “a huge win for everybody” in the battle against threat actors. 

At the State Department, the chief AI officer, chief data officer and members of the agency’s Center for Analytics have successfully leveraged AI in “reducing the noise in terms of threat intelligence,” Lacy said, sifting through “massive amounts of data” to make it “more actionable directly for us.” Streamlining data and threat intel leads to more valuable insights that State can provide to its partners, he added. 

“If I know this piece of information is not useful for me, but it may very well be useful to one of my private industry partners, I need to know how to get that information to them quickly,” Lacy said, noting that the White House has provided a quality blueprint for sharing intelligence and has encouraged agencies to be “very forthcoming now in terms of naming, blaming [and] shaming when incidents happen — and doing it quickly.”

Lacy pointed to a State Department collaboration with foreign ministries from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand that brings together those countries’ cyber defenders in a quarterly meeting to “share a lot of information.” 

“I think we’re past the sharing; we’re on to collaborating,” Lacy said. “I think that’s … the phase we’re in right now. But the collaboration has to yield collective action.”

Treasury’s in a similarly collaborative mode at the moment, fresh off its launch last month of Project Fortress, a public-private partnership aimed at protecting the financial sector from cyber threats. Nur said the agency has been active in onboarding companies and organizations to the group, ensuring that participating financial institutions have access to top tools and are practicing good cyber hygiene before truly “aggressive AI attacks” become the norm.

Whether it’s meeting regularly with other CISOs, coordinating with international partners or establishing communication channels with industry, agency cyber officials across the board agree that mitigating AI-fueled threats will only be possible with more collaboration and better sharing of information.

“In the past, what really prevented us from sharing that information is that embarrassment, that reputational impact,” Nur said. “We can no longer think in those ways. We need to shift our mindset to say, ‘hey, look, we’re going to expect at least two to three a year, maybe even more, and that’s OK.’” 

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During a Center for Strategic & International Studies panel discussion, tech leaders from the Treasury Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs detailed the ways in which they’re pleased with and frustrated by CISA, expressing an overarching sentiment that while the agency has been helpful, there’s room for improvement as it matures.

“We need really common operating standards to which we are aggressively held, versus this sort of voluntary, participative notion — ‘get in touch with us when you need it’ kind of thing,” said Jeff King, Treasury’s principal deputy chief information officer. 

Amber Pearson, deputy chief information security officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs, largely agreed, noting that she’d like to see “more expansion from CISA” when it comes to “those key areas.”

“When a cloud service provider, for example, misses that critical patch or there’s a threat indicator, you know, provide it to us,” she said. “What are those actions that we as a federal agency need to do next? And I think there’s a big gap there.”

Jeff Spaeth, the VA’s deputy CISO and executive director of information security operations, said the agency’s relationship with CISA has “really blossomed this year,” pointing to check-ins on a nearly weekly basis and the assignments of dedicated CISA representatives to the VA. 

But Spaeth also echoed Pearson’s comments on information-sharing. When CISA is “notified by some of these major vendors [of a vulnerability], and I’m not saying they don’t pass the information along, but sometimes it takes a while to get down [into some of the] really in-depth technical pieces instead of, ‘hey, this was a compromise,’” he said.

Many of the comments made during Tuesday’s panel mirrored findings from an October 2023 CSIS report, titled “CISA’s Evolving .gov Mission: Defending the United States’ Federal Executive Agency Networks.” The report called for major investments into the federal cybersecurity workforce, better preparation for cyber threats brought on by artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the adoption of a more standardized and centralized cyber defense strategy, akin to the Department of Defense Information Network.

The topic of defense came up frequently during Tuesday’s panel. King pointed specifically to two Microsoft breaches over the past year in which “significant portions” of the tech giant’s corporate infrastructure were “completely compromised, including the teams that do vulnerability management and incident response threat intelligence.” In cases like that, King said agency IT leaders look to CISA to “balance out the risk landscape.”

That was also the case with a Citrix vulnerability last October. A senior CISA official said at the time that the agency notified nearly 300 organizations that could have been vulnerable to the exploit. In exploits of that kind, King said that Treasury would “need [indicators of compromise] yesterday.” 

“We really need to kind of rethink the recover-and-respond part of this and less about the protect-and-defend part of it,” King said. “And I think that’s where CISA probably needs the opportunity to grow to kind of meet the threat where they are.”

The consensus from the panelists on the role of the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative was that the CISA-managed nerve center — where federal, state and local and private cybersecurity experts come together to work on “actionable cyber risk information” — is on the right track but still in its infancy.

Going forward, Spaeth would like to see even more collaboration and involvement among federal agencies as part of the JCDC, which counts the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Cyber Command, the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, among others, as participants.  

“I know that we have ISACs out there,” Spaeth said, “but I think JCDC has really taken the charge for all federal agencies to share that type of information, or [coordinating] the quick reactions and trying to close the holes as quickly as possible.”

The agency representatives’ feelings on CISA and JCDC mostly aligned with private sector assessments shared Tuesday during a House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection hearing. 

Rob Lee, CEO and founder of Dragos, a company that focuses on operational technology and industrial control system cybersecurity, said it’s important to recognize that agencies like CISA are “putting in the effort to collaborate and that’s a beautiful thing,” but acknowledged that the JCDC is still suffering from “growing pains.”

“The reality is we’re not seeing a lot of success out of [the JCDC] currently, but I think that’s the growing pains,” Lee said. “When government ends up focusing, especially CISA, on the ‘here is the strategy’ level, it’s very effective. … When it gets to the tactical and actually having the experts around the table, that tends to be a bit lacking.”

Approaching security from a more defined and risk-based approach wouldn’t necessarily be an easy shift for CISA or the JCDC, the agency officials acknowledged. But focusing more on the latest threat vectors and threat actors as opposed to “ports, protocols and services,” Spaeth said, is a worthy target. 

“There needs to be, I think, more formulation if this is the way we’re going into a top-down, enforceable strategy,” King said. “And I recognize that is very much a divergence from the way that we’ve thought about cyber and acted on cyber probably over the past decade, if not two.”

CyberScoop reporter Derek B. Johnson contributed to this article.

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Previous projections for how IRA funding would impact the IRS’s revenue only took into account revenues that were directly connected to increased enforcement staffing. The new analysis added modernization investments — as well as information reporting for digital assets, enhanced services to boost voluntary compliance, advances in analytics to improve productivity and other activities — to the equation.

With the “diversified revenue strategies” assessed in the analysis, Treasury projects the IRS to take in $851 billion from fiscal year 2024 to fiscal year 2034. Accounting for IT modernization, the report noted, reveals “a wide array of potential revenue benefits.” 

“Expanded data intake capacity and productivity will help increase compliance; improved audit selection and collection planning can increase the productivity of enforcement activities,” the report stated. “IT investments can also increase the productivity of auditors by providing them with better access to data during the audit process and allow for quicker and more efficient communication between auditors and taxpayers. 

“IT and customer experience investments can also facilitate voluntary compliance by making it easier for taxpayers to communicate with us, enabling taxpayers to complete more tasks online, reducing the demand for direct contact with customer service representatives and allowing us to process returns more quickly and efficiently,” it said.

The analysis noted specifically how investments in IT infrastructure will better position the IRS to handle IT-related outages. During the 2018 tax season, for example, a massive outage took the system offline for 11 hours, leading to processing delays for millions of returns. 

The Treasury highlighted California’s Enterprise Data to Revenue initiative as a case study in how the IRS’s modernization funding infusion could play out. The Golden State saw an approximate 1% increase in collections during the initial phase of its project, which a senior state official attributed mostly to “technical and process improvements that allowed for increased taxpayer self-service.”

If the 1% efficiency increase held for the IRS, the agency would be looking at an extra $43 billion annually, the report said.

While the potential is there for a significant revenue boon for the IRS, the analysis notes that the agency must be prepared for the downside to “the integration of technology in administration.”

“While it significantly enhances government capability to reduce tax evasion through enriched data access, it concurrently presents sophisticated taxpayers, particularly those with high incomes, with novel opportunities to evade taxes,” the report said. “Therefore, as we modernize our IT infrastructure, we must also devise strategies to close these new loopholes, ensuring that the digital transformation leads to a more equitable tax system.”

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The product, watsonx.governance, is aimed at providing organizations with “nutrition label”-like detail about where and how any AI model gets the information for its outputs, so they can meet anticipated transparency and safety regulations, the company said. 

Rob Thomas, IBM’s chief commercial officer and senior vice president of IBM Software, told reporters Monday evening that while AI presents opportunities, it also poses a problem. 

“The problem is that if AI is a black box, and people are just inserting questions and answers come out, that’s a significant issue,” Thomas said. “Because nobody really believes that we can just trust what we’re told blindly.”

The announcement comes as interest in generative AI has soared with tools like ChatGPT, and governments race to create their own frameworks for how the nascent technology should be regulated. Last month, President Joe Biden announced his much-anticipated executive order on AI safety and security.

As interest in AI has grown for both the public and private sectors, so too have concerns about how the models produce their answers. The Government Accountability Office, for example, which is in the process of developing its own large language model, recently noted that it wants to avoid an “auto magical” interface that doesn’t explain its reasoning.

Thomas on Monday said he envisions both business and government use of the tool.

“I see application at every level of government,” he said. “Federal, obviously, state, local, anywhere that an organization is going to be using AI to drive some level of productivity, or … some level of better service to citizens. You really have to have the capability to explain what is going on, and why it’s happening when it is.”

Thomas said IBM has been in conversation with government entities primarily in the U.S., including state and local governments across the country, but he noted that this will be new territory for the government. 

Where companies have over 15 years of experience in meeting reporting requirements for their systems after the financial crisis, “it’s a bit newer in government,” he said. “So I think it will take some time. It will be a bit of a learning curve, but I expect it will happen pretty quickly.”

Chris Padilla, vice president of IBM government regulatory affairs, also noted the company’s recent conversations with government entities at the Monday event.

Padilla said IBM briefed financial officials Monday, including those from the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and the Treasury Department. The company will also brief officials in Europe, including the European Parliament, on Tuesday. 

Watsonx.governance will be generally available for businesses to use in early December and can be used with AI models from IBM or other providers, including open source, according to a Tuesday release.

DefenseScoop reporter Brandi Vincent contributed to this article.

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The IRS in August announced an ambitious digitization effort that will give taxpayers the option to go paperless for all agency correspondence by the 2024 filing season. That effort includes the elimination of up to 200 million pieces of paper annually, cutting processing times in half and expediting refunds by several weeks.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen touted the milestone Tuesday while warning that Republicans’ proposed cuts to the agency’s funding would hamper efforts to continue modernizing digital systems and improving customer service.

“Playing politics with IRS funding is unacceptable. Cutting it would be damaging and irresponsible,” Yellen said in prepared remarks. “The IRS collects 96 percent of the federal government’s revenue. This is the funding that enables our country to protect our national security, provide social security and health care, and invest in our nation’s infrastructure, among other key priorities.”

The IRS and Treasury said that achieving the first goal of the Paperless Processing Initiative will allow more than 94 percent of individual taxpayers to no longer have to send physical mail to the IRS. The second goal of the initiative — providing the option for taxpayers to e-File 20 additional tax forms — will be met by the start of the 2024 filing season, the agencies said.

The IRS also highlighted major updates to Where’s My Refund, its most popular customer service tool, for the 2024 filing season, including the ability to use the tool on mobile devices more seamlessly and to see more detailed refund status messages.

Using resources provided through Inflation Reduction Act funding, taxpayers are now able to respond to more notices online, and the IRS said it has made significant progress in the adoption of new technology that automates the scanning of millions of paper returns. 

The agency also pointed to better phone and in-person services in the coming year.

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Known as the PROviding Treasury Enterprise Cybersecurity Technology & Services (PROTECTS) program, the vehicle is meant to “furnish the best cybersecurity services possible to Treasury, Treasury Bureaus and those federal government agencies who depend on Treasury for their financial management,” according to draft contract documents released Wednesday.

Specifically, the contract will focus on supporting the department’s security operations center (SOC) functions with core services like SOC architecture, engineering, deployment, and management, incident management, vulnerability management, and more.

Under the eight-year blanket purchase agreement, bureaus and offices from across Treasury, including the IRS, Bureau of the Fiscal Service, and others, will have access to the array of cyber services.

Treasury also emphasizes in the draft contract that PROTECTS is much more than a vehicle to provide cybersecurity. “The intent of PROTECTS SOC is to adapt and transform SOC operations and operating models across Treasury and its Bureaus to improve capabilities, consistency, and economies of scale across the Treasury enterprise cybersecurity and SOC functions while reducing enterprise cybersecurity risks including new, emerging, or evolving cyber threats,” it says.

The contract document continues: “This BPA has the capability to address all mission-critical requirements for each Bureau, thereby replacing the many diverse contract vehicles across Treasury and eliminating the multiple types of service contracts.”

Work under the contract will be divided into two models: on-premise support of government-led operations and work fully led by a managed service provider.

At this point in the acquisition cycle, Treasury wants feedback from interest parties on the proposed PROTECTS contract and is accepting comments and questions through Nov. 1.

Treasury did not share the value of the contract in the draft documents. The eventual final contract will be solicited and awarded under the General Services Administration’s Highly Adaptive Cybersecurity Services Special Item Number contracting vehicle.

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Under the single-award contract, called T-Cloud, SAIC will support Treasury’s adoption of a multi-cloud environment as a cloud broker, centralizing management of services from major cloud providers like Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, with the opportunity to onboard others.

“T-Cloud will enable the Treasury Department to rapidly and securely adopt a modern, flexible and cost-effective approach to utilizing and consuming data in the cloud,” said Bob Genter, SAIC’s president of defense and civilian sector. “SAIC is honored to be the Treasury Department’s cloud services digital transformation partner.”

SAIC will also provide services for business operations, technical, security, network, service desk, subject matter expert support, and transition services, according to a news release.

Treasury has been planning out T-Cloud since as far back as 2019, when it introduced a cloud roadmap developed by its Office of the Chief Information Officer in collaboration with the IRS, procurement offices and other stakeholders.

“At present, Treasury bureaus are individually moving forward with cloud solutions, and have implemented a number of cloud solutions to address unique mission priorities requiring agile and elastic approaches, often through duplicative contract actions,” that roadmap explained. “This scattered approach, while offering varying degrees of agility for individual customers, ignores opportunities for cost reduction through service deduplication and consolidated procurement actions.”

The contract has a seven-year period of performance.

Treasury isn’t the only large department to award a major cloud contract recently. The Department of the Interior last week awarded Peraton a $1 billion cloud contract. And, the Department of Agriculture is plotting a similar departmentwide contract for cloud adoption.

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