[yurishimo]

Speaking as an immigrant from America, I really like DigiD! I wish the US had something even remotely similar. The fact that we do not have a standardized national ID easily available to everyone is embarrassing.

DigiD has some minor annoyances, but it's a helluva lot better than some alternatives I could think of.

[vinay427]

> The fact that we do not have a standardized national ID easily available to everyone is embarrassing.

Why? I’ve lived in a European country with common national IDs, in the US, and in a European country without national IDs, and I’m not sure that the absence of it is “embarrassing.” Note that in most European countries it’s an identifier of citizenship, not residence, with other ID cards such as residence permits, drivers licenses, or municipal registrations indicating residence. Therefore, it’s far from sufficient for many common use cases that depend on residence, and the countries that don’t have one such as the US or the UK typically use passports (or ad-hoc solutions such as US/Canada enhanced drivers licenses) for travel.

I agree that digital IDs can be very useful.

[pionar]

> The fact that we do not have a standardized national ID easily available to everyone is embarrassing.

Surely that's hyperbole. State IDs are pretty standardized, and even more so with the REAL ID system (if the mandates for it ever go into effect). When have you ever had a problem using one state's ID in another state?

[yurishimo]

It makes coordinating your information across many different service providers much more efficient. Here in the Netherlands for example, I can use DigiD to login and pay my taxes, pay for health insurance with a private company, authenticate to my pension plan and a ton of other things.

I cant vote with my Texas ID in Wyoming. A passport might be sufficient to vote in a different state for a national election but I’m admit that I’m not 100% sure on that.

Every government agency in the US doesn’t know who I am without me telling them. And even then if they fat finger the number I could be in for a world of hurt until someone realizes.

[corncob15]

I can vote with an out-of-state driver's license in Pennsylvania, it just means that I have to provide a signature to them instead of it getting auto-populated from my driver's license. I'm pretty sure this should be the case in any state.

[seanw444]

It's was on purpose. Americans traditionally don't like the idea of a standard, mandatory national ID. But SSNs have basically been re-appropriated to serve that purpose, to get around that, despite them being explicitly listed as "not intended as a means of general identification."