Hello

For 25 years, I have worked to assure that people are who they say they are (my phrase from my work as counsel to the 9/11 Commission) and improve our border processes. Focusing on the nexus between borders, identity and national security, I have been invited to testify before Congress 19 times on a variety of issues, including E-Verify. For me, border security solutions must also be facilitation solutions. For such solutions to work, good technology must be coupled with strong policies in place about use.

 

In recent years, I have dived deeply into technology and policy issues around government and identity. It was important to me to take the lessons learned on privacy, security and identity best practices and apply them to ZipID, translating those requirements into a workflow that completely federated identity yet provides accuracy, privacy and security for both employer and employee. In addition to its legally required attributes of compliance, ZipID had to have usability, privacy, automation and remoteness. It had to be a Form I-9 unicorn. I got help making that happen from a former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service senior lead in identity, who helped me perfect the logic of the workflow for both the Employer I-9 Console and the new employee mobile app.

 

Which leads me to how ZipID came to be. In 2019, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, who is responsible for verifying new employee passport, social security numbers and other Form I-9 data that employers submit via the E-Verify Program, asked industry to help find a better and more secure way for employers and employees to share information.  Sitting in a crowded work share conference room in downtown Washington D.C. with one of the biggest vendors the US government engages, me and my team came up with the nascent idea of ZipID.  It has taken time to perfect the workflow to one that is easy and seamless to understand, fast and compliant, secure and private, using no identity database nor retention of any transaction.

 

ZipID is in short, a culmination of my 25 years serving the government from inside and out. But it is finally here. I am thrilled to share with you the ZipID workflow, and hope you find it useful in mitigating a government compliance pain point.

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By way of background, I have worked across government in the Senate Judiciary Committee three times as counsel; for the 9/11 Commission as a border counsel and key author of the 9/11 Final Report  border recommendations and our attending 9/11 and Terrorist Travel monograph; and for about a dozen years appeared  continuously on every major news network as a national security identity and border subject matter expert. Today I own Identity Strategy Partners. 

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I am also a spoken word artist, having checked the bucket list box with an invitation to the Grammys. I am the proud great grand daughter of Horace Kephart, instrumental in the founding of the Great Smoky National Park. My parents both grew up without much, but they were extraordinary.  My mother, Lore Kephart, became an author and my father, also Horace Kephart, a CEO, enabling me the privilege of attending Duke University and Villanova School of Law in my hometown.

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I hope what I have done here is useful to you, and that Zippy the Bee, our mascot, becomes your Form I-9 MVP.

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Much thanks, Janice