One of the great mysteries of government solved itself in front of my eyes as soon as I did a hackathon sponsored by a local city. Even simple relationships lik

One of the great mysteries of government solved itself in front of my eyes as soon as I did a hackathon sponsored by a local city. Even simple relationships like matching a person to their address, not only were difficult to access, but literally did not exist (even if they did exist, city officials told us that some people change addresses so quickly we can't count on the data to be accurate). Same goes with similar data points like phone numbers. It's interesting, because this data obviously exists somewhere - with the NSA, cellphone/utility providers, hell, Facebook probably has it - but accessing that as a city official involves a lot of phone calls, warrants, etc. So even things as simple as "send each person a check" are impossible to automate because the data does not exist - and arguably for a lot of people, should not exist in govt hands.