Yeah, the current situation is pretty terrible. Deprecating the old credential-based auth flow, before adopting login.gov was a massive misstep. Five months ago I noticed the alert about deprecating the classic username/password auth, and posted about it [0].
As far as I know login.gov is a viable solution, already in use at the SSA, that is government-run aka doesn't require users to kowtow to an EULA, capricious arbitration, etc. The problem is there was apparently interagency squabbling that messed up the original deployment schedule.
So it's not available. I do hope that changes because the current situation, of mandatory id.me seems pretty terrible.
As far as I know login.gov is a viable solution, already in use at the SSA, that is government-run aka doesn't require users to kowtow to an EULA, capricious arbitration, etc. The problem is there was apparently interagency squabbling that messed up the original deployment schedule. So it's not available. I do hope that changes because the current situation, of mandatory id.me seems pretty terrible.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35519938