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I’d go further and say that government websites and services in general are weird and often feel outdated, especially the more local you get. Some of them look

I’d go further and say that government websites and services in general are weird and often feel outdated, especially the more local you get. Some of them look like they’re straight from the early 2000s. Another thing is that privacy is dead and almost everything is deemed public information. Your address, mugshot, voter rolls, you name it, it’s all deemed public information. But once you actually want to access information that is useful to society as whole, more often than not it’s behind a paywall. Despite this, they still call it “public” information because theoretically anyone can pay for it and get access. It’s one of the first things I noticed when I moved to the US. Another thing that I’ve noticed is that, if possible, there always needs to be a middle man inserted, a private corporation that can make a profit out of it. You want to identify yourself to the government? Well you’re gonna need an ID.me account or complete a quiz provided to you by LexisNexis or one of the credit reporting agencies. Why? How is it that the government of all entities, isn’t capable of verifying me themselves? Zooming out even further you’ll start to recognize even more ancient processes you interact with in daily life. The whole banking situation and the backbone that’s running it is a great example. The concept of pending transactions, checks and expensive and slow transfers is baffling to me. It’s so weird, like ooh, aah this country is the pinnacle of technological innovation, yet in daily life there’s so much that hinges on ancient and suboptimal processes that you don’t see in, say, Western Europe. My best guess is that’s this is because of a mix of lack of funding and politicians that wanting to placate profit seeking corporations. Ironically, and I have no hard evidence for this because I’m too lazy to look into it, I suspect that on the long term it costs more to outsource it than it does to do it themselves. /rant

domh 3y ago
I feel like the USA was probably ahead of the curve on things like the banking system in the 90s but removing all of that cruft and replacing with a v2 is not an easy thing to do. Especially when the population are generally skeptical of government and outsourcing to a private corporation is seen as the cheaper option. Short term it's potentially cheaper/quicker to outsource but long term maintenance contracts and lobbying to keep things as they are is much more expensive. In the USA you find these whole industries that exist due to the inadequacies of the old systems. E.g. venmo doesnt need to exist in Western Europe (and probably rest of world?) because person-to-person bank transactions are free and easy.

domh 3y ago

I feel like the USA was probably ahead of the curve on things like the banking system in the 90s but removing all of that cruft and replacing with a v2 is not an easy thing to do. Especially when the population are generally skeptical of government and outsourcing to a private corporation is seen as the cheaper option. Short term it's potentially cheaper/quicker to outsource but long term maintenance contracts and lobbying to keep things as they are is much more expensive. In the USA you find these whole industries that exist due to the inadequacies of the old systems. E.g. venmo doesnt need to exist in Western Europe (and probably rest of world?) because person-to-person bank transactions are free and easy.