It's bad enough that in some cases I believe the designers should be threatened with legal penalties.
I discovered this when it was late at night and I was procrastinating going to bed and I was curious what my estimated Social Security benefit would be at retirement so I tried to log into mySSA and it said the website is closed from like 11 PM to 5 AM or something like that.
I couldn't believe it. I could understand a weekly several-hour maintenance/batch processing window, but DAILY?
Two years in a row we’ve been able to fill out a 1040 and the NY state equivalent and make a paper submission in less time than it takes to reach an operator on hold.
These identity verification services look like a scam to me. LinkedIn incessantly hassles me to verify with CLEAR and it always fails without a clear error message, either “it just doesn’t work” or my hair has grown too much since I got my driver’s license or it is making me take my glasses off and comparing to a driver’s license photo where I am wearing glasses.
Even if their intent is to run an 'honest' business, the method of bouncing a user around to god knows how many domains during the process becomes effectively indistinguishable from a compromised service, and the alternative of having each site host their own id verification system screams, HACK US. I can see users becoming increasingly accustomed to getting out their cards several times during a sign-up and not having the foggiest idea of where their information went to.
These aren't unsolvable problems. The UK, for example, had invested a lot of time and effort into making their websites user-friendly. In most countries filing taxes online is something you can do during your lunch break - without paying the Turbotax maffia. Driver's license? You can order that online, and make an appointment for a 15-minute window to pick it up.
If interacting with the government is painful, it is almost always because someone benefits from it being painful.
Obama had the Digital Service (that Trump shut down) which paid higher salaries. Those folks were sharp and everything they touched was actually decent.
As I noted this is not unique to government. Large corporate projects at the Fortune 500 are often the same sort of consultant-driven crap.
Really the only reason you need TreasuryDirect is for buying Series I bonds (and maybe a few other niche Treasury products), which are not available through brokerages.
Back then I thought Treasury Direct was great.
Early in my career, I was warned that if I took a job with the state of California, I’d be stuck there for my whole career. I’d be unhirable in the private sector.
I'm not sure I see the upside of moving to a nation knowing that its citizens actively despise my existence.
