Judging by the description, it really ought to be titled "This is what happens when this one government in particular builds software". I haven't listened yet,

Judging by the description, it really ought to be titled "This is what happens when this one government in particular builds software". I haven't listened yet, but it would be a pleasant surprise if they went looking for examples outside the US to see if it is just as bad when other countries' governments build software. Having recently started consulting for a non-US national government, I'm very pleased to observe from first impressions how solid, reliable and clean the code is. Some of that is possibly down to avoiding so many so-called "best practices" of the private sector, building on proven platforms and frameworks instead of following the latest developer trends and - especially - eschewing "modern front end" in most cases. It's a breath of fresh air.