OMB Catching Up With Social Security Policy

The Associated Press reported yesterday that the Office of Management and Budget has asked agencies to limit the use of Social Security numbers when collecting information from Americans so that it can reduce the chance of identity theft.

The small step -- OMB is asking agencies to limit the use of Social Security numbers to the "minimum necessary for the proper performance" of their duties -- is still behind what some states and companies did five years ago to eliminate all together the use of Social Security numbers as unique identifiers. A California law, which took effect in 2002, prohibited companies from using California residents' Social Security numbers as an identifier. Universities, such as Stanford, Wisconsin and Arizona, instituted policies years ago that prohibited the use of Social Security numbers, and the movement picked up steam in 2002 when students at other universities began to demand that their schools not use their Social Security numbers. The next year, IBM required its more than 100 health insurance providers to stop printing Social Security numbers on medical ID cards, claims forms and other documents or risk losing its business.

But as in the case of IBM, limiting the policy to just a narrow part of operations will not do much to eliminate the risk of losing personal information. In March IBM announced it had lost computer tapes containing the Social Security numbers of current and former IBM employees.