This sounds like a horrible way of running a society. This is like the government intentionally keeping the tax code complicated and making filing taxes difficu

This sounds like a horrible way of running a society. This is like the government intentionally keeping the tax code complicated and making filing taxes difficult so companies can exist that then fix that problem. You are forcing the government to be immensely inefficient, for no other reason than that a small number of people can profit from those inefficiencies at the expense of improving society as a whole. The government is gathering this data. Building your business on top of what another entity is doing (government or company) is always a risk. The exact same risk is taken if you build something on top of the API or data of another company. If you were to build a Twitter client and then Twitter would make their own client available you are shit out of luck. That is the risk you take when you build something on somebody else's infrastructure. I honestly don't see why the government is so special that it should be completely handcuffed and prevented from making meaningful positive changes in society just so the profits of a small amount of people can be protected. If the government does something to improve society and you can't compete and make a profit, do something else. Would you start a firefighting service and then complain that the government offers this service for free? At that point, why have a government at all?