E77: Rebuilding Trust in Government Identity and Fraud Controls

In this episode, Jennifer Saha interviews Jordan Burris, who leads Socure’s public sector business using AI to verify identity and predict fraud risk, drawing on his prior work in digital trust and as chief of staff to the U.S. CIO. Burris argues fraudsters—helped by digitized services and modern AI tools—are outpacing government, making old identity-proofing standards and “bouncer-at-the-club” checks insufficient at scale. They discuss how pandemic-era “pay and chase” benefit delivery created losses that are often unrecoverable once funds move overseas, and why agencies must shift to layered, preventative controls that reduce friction for legitimate users. Burris cites efforts in California (EDD, CalHEERS/ACA enrollment, DMV) and other states, and emphasizes sharing risk signals across agencies and with transparent vendor partners without broad PII transfer. He predicts success will mean manageable fraud rates and better citizen experience, with accountability led by senior agency leadership and organization-wide vigilance similar to cybersecurity. 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 00:28 Jordan Burris Background 02:55 Why Fraud Is Surging 05:43 How Identity Checks Fail 07:49 Pay and Chase Breakdown 11:42 Building Prevention Programs 13:47 States Leading the Way 17:58 Breaking Data Silos 23:32 Five Year Fraud Outlook 26:06 Who Owns Fraud Risk 29:31 Closing Thanks and Wrap