A slight change to the United States Social Security Number (SSN) system could protect Americans against identity theft using existing government agencies.
If Americans could password protect their SSN and key it to their mandatory current address and optional phone number this newly keyed database could be centrally maintained to protect everyone's identity.
The average citizen already exists in many databases containing both social security numbers (SSN) and individuals addresses which can and have been compromised. So why not make the SSN's public, but protect compromise of Personally Identifiable Information (PII)?
Either the Census Bureau or Internal Revenue Service could have an additional department formed whose function would be to protect our SSN's and PII.