In June 2020, Eliott submitted an application for his name and gender to be officially changed in civil status records. It would be over six months before he received a response, a January 2021 message that his files would be updated. Despite the wait, though, it was a significant step in his transition process. And yet, it was only the first leg of a much longer administrative journey − one that would ensure he was recognized by his new identity everywhere online.

In our era of digital tracks that are almost impossible to cover, widespread automation and highly personalized profiling, what does it mean to change one’s identity? It is a question that deeply affects the transgender community. For some members of that community, the mere mention of their deadname − the name used before transitioning − can be a painful experience. According to those interviewed by AlgorithmWatch, updating one’s online identity can come with real headaches and personal consequences.

Legislative Discrepancies

France provides a telling example. The country’s legislation regarding identity changes has been updated several times in recent years. Since 2016, changing one’s name has been possible by filing a request at the city hall. That same year, requesting medical evidence for gender transition became illegal. Still, to fully update their identity, transgender people have to undergo a legal process and provide a variety of documents, including testimonials from friends and family. And even this onerous process does not guarantee that automated systems will get the data right. Algorithmic mismanagement at the administration level can lead to mistakes in medical diagnosis, denial of welfare aid, and more.

In public administration, algorithmic systems can be used in various domains (education, tax services, health, law enforcement, etc.) and for many purposes, including calculating welfare benefits, predicting risks, matching records, and more. But these processes can only work if information actually flows reliably between local and national offices and through interoperable systems. Flawed data architecture only increases the difficulties faced by the transgender community.

“It’s simpler than before [to change your name],” says Daisy Letourneur, a trans woman and a member of the feminist NGO Toutes des femmes. “But it still leaves the judge with a degree of discretion, which varies from one judge to another.” The NGO is currently campaigning to provide trans people the administrative freedom to change their gender and name as they wish. Doing so would grant trans people the same rights as other French citizens, who are able to change their name or details of their identity as needed for reasons such as marriage or religious conversions.

Once he received notification that he could change his name and gender, Eliott recalls, updating his birth certificate took only one week, a rather straightforward process. But it took two to three months to get a new social security number. In France, social security numbers indicate gender: For men, they start with 1, for women they start with 2. To apply for the change, Eliott sent a large batch of documents to the administration, including copies of his birth certificate, the notification allowing his transition, a letter explaining the ordeal and more. In return, he received a temporary certificate to use while waiting for his new social security account. “But two weeks before processing it, they closed the old one.”

“It can become a problem if you have a long-term illness or if you need specific treatments,” says Letourneur. “It also adds a form of anonymization that, in this case, is more problematic than useful.” Instead of having their original social security account updated, trans people get a completely new one, creating additional administrative hurdles. “I lost all my medical history, documents related to my sick leaves, the payments I had received from social security and so on,” Eliott says.

Automated Welfare 

Dealing with the welfare system was challenging on another level as well: “They received my request and to some extent complied. My gender was changed in our exchanges; I was addressed as ‘mister.’ But they kept my former name.” 

While the administration uses automated systems to detect fraud, the update of their databases does not appear to be a smooth process. Eliott had to be persistent to set his record straight: “I wrote several emails. They would ask me for documents I had already sent and say they could not change my name without seeing a copy of my new identity card, which took another three months to be issued. Still, my gender had already been corrected. It was all very confusing.”

Violet, who transitioned in 2022, experienced the lack of interconnection between regional databases: “It took us many months and numerous calls to understand that the office of my new region knew nothing of my identity change. All the information had remained with my former welfare management office.”

Even though she reached out to Eliott for help, updating her records with the welfare management office proved so difficult, she says, that some of her subsidies were suspended for two months. “For immigrants, it can get even more difficult,” Letourneur adds: “Suspicions of fraud always arise.”

When asked if France Connect, the online identification and authentication service provided by the French government, could not make things easier, Violet laughs. The service promises that it “simplifies” administrative work “for over 40 million people,” by providing a single, easy-to-use authentication service. Violet discovered, however, that it worked the other way around: “We had to manually change my name on every administrative website to be able to use it.”

Covering Digital Tracks

The private sector is hardly any better. At his bank, Eliott encountered the exact opposite experience than with the welfare system: His name was updated, but not his gender. “They probably have two databases somewhere that don’t match. So when I got my new card, ‘madam’ was still written on it.”

Failure to change identity online makes people vulnerable in many situations – digitally when trying to take advantage of an online public or a private service, but also in real life. Daisy Letourneur, for instance, thought she was “in the clear in every way” until her deadname popped up in a database at her child’s school, years after her transition was completed. She was forced to out herself to clear things up. 

As cumbersome as it sounds, Eliott remains dispassionate about the whole process. “At work, I asked the human resources team to process my identity change, and they did so swiftly at the administrative level. On our corporate website, though, my former name remained until I left the place.” 

And even though human resources made the administrative change, they did not update Eliott’s insurance information. When he realized this, he had to contact the insurance company himself to correct it. “I had to look for all the information I needed by myself, because nobody could tell me exactly what had to be done.”

The Psychological Burden

The government website mostly helped with public administration. With the tax administration, though, Eliott recalls, it took a whole year before his civil status was fully corrected. But public services are far from the most difficult aspect that trans people have to deal with. According to Letourneur, “public servants know what an official paper looks like. When you send them the document, they usually know how to proceed.” In the private sector, on the other hand, responses can be quite “erratic,” she says. “You’ll see your deadname everywhere, which means you need to modify it or create a whole new profile.”

Eliott wishes that “at least” public servants would be better informed, because most of the time “they’re discovering the topic” for the first time. Which means they kick things up to their managers, who don’t necessarily know how to proceed either. “If we brought this issue closer to that of name changes following marriage or conversion to a new religion, it would be useful for many people.” In a perfect online world, he dreams of “a simple form that helps you change your name in several places at once.” The way things are today, by contrast, transitioning “demands specific digital literacy and takes a lot of time. It’s a real job,” Eliott notes.

Pending hypothetical improvements, he turned to Wikitrans, a community-led wiki that gathers information to help people with their transition. “People in the community help each other and share best practices,” says Letourneur. “Changemy.name,” another volunteer website, grades private services according to the flexibility they provide to update one’s account. If it is too difficult, “a strategy many trans people follow is to change providers. For instance, to change banks. It is often the simplest thing to do.”