I once had to call the help desk for a US government system. They were actually surprisingly responsive and helpful, on a weekend even. After speaking a bit of

I once had to call the help desk for a US government system. They were actually surprisingly responsive and helpful, on a weekend even. After speaking a bit of technical jargon the person on the other end of the line understood that I wasn't an idiot and did indeed have a real issue. I asked if anyone else had such a problem with the system and the response was: "Sir, this is a government IT system and it works about as well as you'd expect a government IT system to work." We both laughed. I'm happy the people at 18F are making progress in changing the validity of that stereotype.