An industry coalition is urging the Trump administration’s “Department of Government Efficiency” to jumpstart the widespread adoption of mobile drivers licenses and other digital identity solutions to help combat online fraud and cyber crime.

In a Jan. 28 letter to the newly renamed United States DOGE Service, the Better Identity Coalition applauded an initial focus for the DOGE commission on rooting out fraud and improper payments in government benefits programs. The coalition is backed by major corporations across sectors including financial services, healthcare and telecommunications.

And the group is telling the new Trump administration that digital identity goes beyond government benefits programs. The letter points to how both criminal groups and nation states have used stolen identities to commit cyberattacks against banks and other institutions.

“The new Trump administration has a golden opportunity to take decisive action that will not only address government benefits fraud but also give Americans tools that they can use to better protect themselves everywhere they do business online,” the coalition writes.

The industry group had pressed the Biden administration to act on digital identity, but a long rumored identity executive order never came to fruition. Biden had teased the executive order in response to high rates of fraud in federal pandemic relief programs.

The coalition is now pushing the Trump administration to develop a digital identity strategy that involves the government playing a “more direct role in addressing deficiencies in digital identity infrastructure that are leading to massive fraud and cybercrime in both the public and private sectors,” according to the letter.

The letter also recommends the USDS provide states with grants to upgrade their credentialing infrastructure to issue mobile drivers licenses, referred to as mDLs.

And it calls for the Trump administration to leverage private industry to “create multiple pathways for Americans to choose how they want to prove who they are online.”

“By focusing on closing the gap between physical and digital credentials, the Trump administration can make it much easier for Americans to protect and assert their identity in any domain – in a way that is more secure, convenient, and better for privacy than the legacy solutions we have today,” the letter states.

Jeremy Grant, coordinator of the Better Identity Coalition, said the letter to DOGE dovetails with a new policy blueprint the coalition released Tuesday that includes broader recommendations on identity security.

“There is not a silver bullet that’s out there that’s going to address every challenge in identity and authentication, but collectively, the policy recommendations in this blueprint, if they’re embraced and enacted and funded, can make a very significant dent in solving our problems in the next two to three years,” Grant said during an event on Tuesday in Washington.

While Biden never issued a long-awaited digital identity executive order, his second cyber executive order issued earlier this month did include action on cyber crime and fraud. Trump notably has not revoked that cyber EO.

The directive calls on agencies to evaluate whether grant funding is available to help states adopt mDls. And it calls for the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop standards for supporting remote digital identity verification tools.

It additionally calls on agencies to consider accepting digital identity documents that meet certain privacy and security standards.

And it notably calls on the Treasury Department to work with the General Services Administration on a pilot program for notifying individuals when their identity is being used to access a public benefits program, with the goal of stopping fraudulent activity.

Kemba Walden, who served as acting national cyber director in 2023, said she was glad the Trump administration had not yet revoked Biden’s recent cyber executive order. But she also said it should have directed more actions to improve Login.gov, a secure sign-in service run by GSA and used by a host of other federal agencies.

“The federal government needs to continue to improve its Login.gov in order to be able to provide services and federal benefits that a lot of Americans rely on,” Walden said.

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