Video: How Secure, Branded Calls Can Help Close the Government Trust Gap

Wyatt Cash: Government agencies have come a long way in verifying the identities of constituents transacting business with a federal agency, particularly in person or through secure online portals. But a significant weak spot remains, and that’s doing business over the phone.

Verifying an inbound caller is who they say they are remains an ongoing challenge. At the same time, agencies seeking to respond to citizens’ inquiries face a crippling new paradox. Phone and text spam have become so ubiquitous that the public has grown deeply skeptical of every ring they get and has been conditioned not to trust who’s calling, even when caller ID shows up on their phone.

Today, we’re here to talk about that challenge. I’m Wyatt Cash with Scoop News Group, and here to unpack some of the ramifications and how federal agencies are working to improve trust in inbound and outbound phone calls is Scott Straub, Senior Director of Public Sector Market Strategy at TransUnion. Scott, thank you so much for joining us today.

Scott Straub: Thank you, Wyatt, for having me. I appreciate it.

Wyatt Cash: I’d like to start the conversation with your view that, while federal agencies have generally secured the digital front door when it comes to identity verification, the phone channel has become the primary soft spot for fraud. Why is the phone such a volatile channel for building trust right now?

Scott Straub: That’s a good question. I want to provide a little background about myself because I feel a little déjà vu right now. About 15 years ago, digital identity theft, tax refund fraud and identity fraud were happening at a large scale. I happen to be on several patents for this from a prior company where I worked, and I’m watching the same trends around the phone now.

When you think about how a government interacts with a consumer to verify who they are and sign them up for benefits, help them get a driver’s license or something to that effect, there are three primary ways to do it. One is in person, such as going to the DMV or a Social Security Administration office. It’s really hard to impersonate someone else in person, so that channel is fairly well protected.

Then, 15 years ago, the digital channels came along. NIST has the 800-63 guidelines for digital identity standards, and government agencies have, by and large, conformed to them. That hole got plugged. Then there’s the phone. The phone has been a constant for more than 100 years and now we carry these devices with us. The phone channel is how people interact with a government agency. Since in-person fraud is really hard and digital channels have been strengthened, the phone channel is the open, vulnerable channel people now target.

The phone is also very personal because you can hear a voice on the other end. You know you’re interacting with someone, or you believe you are. Research shows when consumers have a problem, they still turn to the phone because they want to talk to someone who can solve it. It can’t always be solved by an AI chatbot or a frequently asked questions page. They call the government agency and say, “Hi, I am Scott Straub. I have this question. I got this letter in the mail from you, and I’d like to address this issue.”

Phones are important and integral to our lives, and they’re being exploited. They’re with us all the time. They’re usually the last devices we touch before we go to sleep and the first we touch when we wake up. Everybody knows this. Criminals are attacking that soft spot because they can’t easily get through on the physical side or the digital side. The phone is left open to vulnerability and attacks.

Wyatt Cash: Absolutely. On the other side of the coin, citizens have grown deeply skeptical of call and text spammers. Even federal guidance now tells citizens not to trust caller ID, ironically. We recently covered a case in which local law enforcement numbers were being spoofed. What is the impact on government agencies in terms of efficiency and outreach when the public can’t trust who’s calling?

Scott Straub: Thank you for bringing that up. As quick background, I used to work at the U.S. Treasury where we did debt collection. I understand government efficiency because we managed call center metrics to be as efficient an organization as possible. What happens is the government needlessly makes and takes calls. That increases call handle time and talk time, and sometimes it’s needless because you don’t know who that person is.

The same problem happens on the outbound side for consumers.

I can’t make this up because it happened on my way out of the Metro. I got a spoofed call. The caller used my name, and I’m just going to read the script: “Hi, Scott. This is Kylie. I’m looking to speak to Kia Barnes’ family member or relative. Please give me a call back as soon as you can.” Then they left a phone number. Phone numbers are publicly available, so they can spoof them and try to draw someone in.

I got this call, looked at it and knew it was fake, but not everybody does. As customers get these calls, they erode overall efficiency because people are already skeptical. Nowadays, with AI and deepfakes, the voice on the other end of the phone could be impersonating somebody else. The call could sound 100% legitimate, but it could be coming from a scam call center in Cambodia or another foreign country.

The really tough part, especially with law enforcement, is that many of us are getting texts that appear to come from jurisdictions outside where we live, saying we have unpaid parking tickets or other unpaid charges. It’s a legitimate-looking summons that’s being spoofed, and AI and deepfake technology are enabling it.

A core function of government is to serve and protect. It’s about a sense of community. As that sense of community is attacked, it erodes trust. When there’s a legitimate business purpose for interacting with the government, such as calling an agency about an assistance program, people want a high degree of trust in that call. That applies to both the consumer making or taking the call and the government agency. As call volumes increase, they drive down efficiency and the effectiveness of those programs.

Wyatt Cash: One agency I understand TransUnion has worked with, and that has been able to turn around the trust equation, is the Department of Veterans Affairs. What did the VA do to provide a more verified signal for callers, which is so important for veterans, and what has been the effect on efficiency?

Scott Straub: I can definitely discuss the VA. They’re a great partner of ours. We’re pleased to work with them because their job is to serve veterans and care for their families and heirs. That’s a very important agency mission.

I’ll start at the beginning. We went in and ran a pilot. I used to be a federal official, so I understand what it’s like when someone says, “There’s this new technology.” An agency doesn’t want to be the guinea pig, but there might be a problem to solve. The VA’s job is to engage and enroll as many veterans as possible, provide services and deliver the benefits they’ve earned.

The VA identified an issue around veteran engagement. Not enough veterans were interacting with the agency. They agreed to run a pilot with one program, the Solid Start program, at the point when a veteran transitions from military life to civilian life. It’s a critical moment and the VA wanted to increase trust in its phone calls.

We ran a quick analysis to see what was happening with the phones. Then we implemented technology that displays the VA logo and a blue check mark, letting a veteran know it’s actually the VA calling. The call could be from a doctor’s office or pharmacy or it could concern an upcoming surgery. The veteran has the confidence to answer.

The pilot produced a 65% increase in contact rates for that one VA program. We also removed spam tagging. Sometimes a carrier changes a phone number or an outbound line during a technology upgrade and a spam tag emerges. When consumers get a phone call labeled “spam,” they don’t answer it. When it says the VA is calling, they do.

The VA experienced a 20% increase in answer rates and, very importantly, a 35% decrease in outbound call volume. Overall, the VA increased engagement. Once people answered, the call handle time actually went up, which was positive. A longer call can mean a productive call in which a veteran receives the service they need and gets multiple questions addressed.

Wyatt Cash: Those are dramatic numbers. Government leaders are used to million-dollar, multiyear implementations and that has always been a challenge with new technologies. How simple is it technically for an agency to deploy branded caller display technology and authenticated signals?

Scott Straub: I’d like to get into that. When I was in the federal government and we were sitting around the table making decisions, one of my jokes was that the worst priority to be is priority number seven. You’re good enough for the top 10, but you’re not going to make the top five. If you don’t make the top five, you don’t get funded.

A lot of times, that’s because of the switching costs from one platform to another. These are big implementations and very large systems, like the ones we had at Treasury, so it was always hard to make a change.

Now I’m on the other side of the table. When I walk into a room, people say, “This is going to take a long time. You’re talking about our phone system.” But that’s okay. We provision caller ID for more than 90% of the US. All we need from customers is the list of phone numbers they want loaded into the system and tagged appropriately so those calls reach the intended recipients.

They can send the phone numbers in an email or spreadsheet. People are skeptical and ask if it’s really that easy. It is. Within a week, or a couple of days at most, those phone numbers are propagated through the system.

We’re now deployed across all VA phone numbers, not just the Solid Start program. They’re amazed by how easy the implementation is. They send us the phone numbers and we take care of the rest.

Wyatt Cash: I understand the authors of a protocol called STIR/SHAKEN, as well as its governance standards, are now on TransUnion’s team. The protocol was designed to combat illegal caller ID spoofing. How does that help TransUnion give agencies a unique level of attestation and help ensure their calls won’t be blocked?

Scott Straub: That’s a very good question. The telephony world is complex, so I won’t get too far into the details. I’ll provide a high-level overview.

There are A, B and C levels of attestation involving the originating carrier and the terminating carrier. At level A, we can verify and authenticate the call with both the originating and terminating carriers. At level B, you get one or the other. At level C, we don’t really know where the call is coming from and it looks like a spoofed call. At the simplest level, that’s how it works.

Neustar was acquired by TransUnion and we now run the Global Trust Lab. When people and businesses around the world want to move their contact centers to the cloud and use new telephony standards such as STIR/SHAKEN, they come to our lab to test. That’s a significant position of trust within the global telecommunications community.

We know we’re trusted, and customers know we’re trusted. When everything is deployed to meet STIR/SHAKEN standards, it’s done in one trusted environment. It comes back to that sense of community I mentioned. Governments and commercial customers want a high degree of trust.

If a bank is calling, for example, it wants to give me confidence it’s actually calling to ask about a mortgage or loan application. It wants me to know the caller is legitimate and not someone who learned I’m making a transaction and is trying to get in the middle of it.

With STIR/SHAKEN attestation, a level A call has a high degree of fidelity, so people can trust that call. Level B calls are also generally trustworthy. A level C call may need to be treated differently.

Wyatt Cash: Lastly, Scott, if an agency wants to improve phone engagement with citizens and commit to mutual trust, which is so important right now, what’s the first step you would recommend?

Scott Straub: First, listen to your peers and colleagues. This is similar to the identity fraud and identity theft problem from 15 years ago. I understand I’m an industry person and, at the end of the day, we generate revenue from these services. At the same time, we solve these problems.

Step one is recognizing the spoofed call I showed you was real and this is happening every day. Customers and individuals get these calls all the time. Understand the problem is real. It’s the same thing we saw with identity theft and identity fraud. It took customers a couple of years to understand they really were being stolen from. I was one of the people educating them. It’s the same thing now with contact centers.

We run a dial health analysis. An agency gives us its outbound phone numbers, and we review the previous week, two weeks or another agreed-upon period. We identify how many phone numbers are being tagged as spam and how many are not.

This problem is hidden in plain sight. Telephony happens through the wires behind the walls, towers and signals. Across that infrastructure, calls can be tagged or mistagged. Once we can see that, we can provide verifiable proof the problem exists and it affects the agency.

When people see “spam,” they won’t answer. If the call shows the actual agency, they’re more likely to pick up. It starts with running a dial health analysis so we can see the scope of the problem and understand it from there.

Wyatt Cash: Scott Straub, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your perspective on how agencies can improve trust when working with constituents by focusing on phone fraud and the rate at which this environment continues to change.

Scott Straub: Thank you very much.