[technion]

I've gone back and forth on this. The very likely outcome of such a thing in practice is another PCI-like process. We both know an "EFF-like" organisation selected by a Government will one of the big accounting firms or similar in practice.

Particularly once there's a certification fee, it quickly becomes a racket, where people with strong ethics and skills get pushed aside by someone who paid a fortune to sit a course. Language lawyers will find ways to sign off on major issues, and some largely irrelevant thing ends up becoming the majority of the process.

[heyjudy]

You're catastrophizing by jumping to a negative outcome, similar to a cognitive distortion. It doesn't have to become a racket; that is a leadership choice. Individual identity issuing, public key certifying authority, banking, news, healthcare, truth-worthiness and many more areas would all be served best by non-profits that are funded by a combination of grants, modest fees and/or donations. There are some human activities that are too important to be privatized, like the fire department and the NTSB... whether the government should or shouldn't be responsible for running X is a topic for another time.