The CityKey ID card program offers a government-issued ID to the more than 2.6 million residents of Chicago in an effort to reduce obstacles to accessing city services. The resource mitigates challenges for marginalized populations like those who are not cisgender. It helps residents access government services, apply for housing and more. These cards are available to all Chicagoans regardless of age or immigration status.
Chicagoans could get a CityKey card via in-person appointment or through the online portal until mid-June — when the portal was taken offline to protect residents following an April subpoena from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement requesting records related to the program. Questions have recently been raised about whether the federal government has the right to obtain state and local data.
“The online platform is paused until we can reassess our processes,” a spokesperson for the Chicago Office of the City Clerk, which has administered CityKey, said via email.
The Office of the City Clerk receives legal documents for the city, which are then sent to the Department of Law to respond. This includes the administrative subpoena, the spokesperson said: “As such, we’re unable to share details at this time.”
Although not all details are public, the city has announced that the CityKey service will indeed remain available to city residents by in-person appointment. No online record is retained through this method, protecting sensitive information so residents can safely access their government’s services.
“This was a tough decision as this program serves a number of vulnerable populations that rely on the accessibility of CityKey, and ultimately, that’s also the reason I’m pausing our online platform,” City Clerk Anna Valencia said in a statement.
Product features for the CityKey card are informed in large part by community engagement with marginalized populations like the LGBTQ+ community, veterans, and the formerly incarcerated, as Eric Vazquez, former chief technology officer for the Office of the City Clerk, previously told Government Technology.
CityKey acts as a four-in-one card, functioning as an ID, a Ventra transit card, a library card, and a Chicago Rx prescription discount card. More than 140,000 Chicagoans have obtained this card since the program launched in 2017.
Valencia affirmed that she will continue to prioritize policies that put people first, and that will not change “[r]egardless of who is in a position of power.”
A key risk posed by the federal government accessing state and local data is that information collected for one intent could be used for another without explicit consent of those who provided it, which is a focus of existing privacy protections.
