#452 - When Identity Becomes Critical Infrastructure with Shea McGrew

<p>Shea McGrew, Chief Technology Officer at Maricopa County, returns to Identity at the Center one year after episode 376 to take on a question she first raised at our Identity After Dark session: when does digital identity become critical infrastructure? Jeff and Jim talk with Shea about how a county broadband and digital equity project led her to see digital trust as the thread running through every digital government service, and why that trust depends on identity. The conversation covers building an external identity portal for residents, designing for consent and privacy from the start, why residents extend trust to private platforms more readily than to government, the right to be forgotten, data governance across departments, and where decentralized identity and verifiable credentials might fit. Shea also shares her view on access reviews as a learning journey, what it would take to trust AI agents with certifications, and whether an agent could ever be considered a citizen. Plus, potatoes and the proper way to cut a sandwich.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>Connect with Shea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shea-mcgrew-6b82a36/</p><p><br></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn:</p><p><br></p><p>Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/</p><p><br></p><p>Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/</p><p><br></p><p>Visit the show on the web at http://idacpodcast.com</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Welcome to Identity at the Center (or AI at the Center)</p><p>02:19 How Jim and Jeff met, and how the podcast started</p><p>04:09 Jeff&#39;s fall conference schedule</p><p>06:39 Do you want IDAC content over the holidays?</p><p>07:32 IDPro membership and introducing Shea McGrew</p><p>08:15 Looking back at Identity After Dark</p><p>10:44 Zero trust progress one year later</p><p>12:04 From device identity to external identity and broadband</p><p>16:04 What counts as critical infrastructure?</p><p>19:00 External identity requirements in government</p><p>21:04 The blast radius of identity failure</p><p>23:06 If identity is critical infrastructure, who owns it?</p><p>24:26 What other public sector leaders are saying</p><p>26:40 One person, many identities</p><p>28:40 How government earns resident trust</p><p>32:37 Why not just copy Amazon?</p><p>35:02 A right to be forgotten in the US?</p><p>36:22 Governing data across department boundaries</p><p>38:30 Decentralized identity and the ownership problem</p><p>41:30 Tokenization and existing blockch