zlacker

One big difference is management control. People feel that government administered services tend to have poor management and citizen services more often than not. One big example is the DMV since almost every has experience dealing with it, long queue times are almost universal because no one gives a crap and it's very hard to fire a government employee. Or the passport issuance, or applying for permits. Or unemployment benefits, the list goes on and on.

Imagine if the DMV and passport services had even the possibility of competition like a private company has. You bet all of a sudden the service would get much faster and better and with fewer mistakes and red tape with the same or fewer number of employees. Or someone would set up a competitor and imagine how many people would even pay extra just to not waste several hours of their time.

It's tax payer money so there is a lot more waste than even at big private companies. For example, the costs to just administer and operate the social security administration(not including any money paid out to recipients) is $15 billion dollars with a big B. There is no incentive for anyone to save the tax payer any money and there would be a huge pushback from govt contractors, unions and employeees. See how much hate DOGE gets for even proposing cuts or higher efficiencies.

Any large IT project in the government in almost any country and at any goverment costs huge amounts while not returning much value if any. Look at the state and costs of local metro stations and trains in almost any city.

>>ivewon+(OP)
That's interesting example to choose, as I've actually heard often that the Social Security administration is an example of an efficient government administration.

For example, a quick Google search shows administrative overhead as around 0.5% of benefits: https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/top-ten-facts-...

>>ivewon+(OP)
> See how much hate DOGE gets for even proposing cuts or higher efficiencies.

I don't think many people believed DOGE was ever intended to improve government efficiency in any real sense.

>>ivewon+(OP)
Well, my local DMV is much more efficient and friendly than the private health insurance company I have to deal with.

But part of that is lack of competition. I can't really switch to a different insurance company, because the one I am with is heavily subsidized by my employer.

>>ivewon+(OP)
In my entire life, I spent much less time in DMV offices than on the line calling AT&T's customer support.

USPS has also been great overall.

>>ivewon+(OP)
And BTW, I agree that Social Security overhead is unacceptable. It should be privatized and increased to at least $500 billion to be comparable with health insurance companies.

It's not acceptable at all to make private companies look bad.

>>devinp+C1
Just one instance.

https://fedscoop.com/problem-project-threatens-progress-soci...

> The program, called the Disability Case Processing System, or DCPS, was designed to improve case processing and enhance customer service. But six years and $288 million later the program has “delivered limited functionality and faced schedule delays as well as increasing stakeholder concerns

For the main system they're still using COBOL, which has no Date data type, causing issues even in 2025.

>>cybera+R8
If it was a company it'd have failed already.

> The program, called the Disability Case Processing System, or DCPS, was designed to improve case processing and enhance customer service. But six years and $288 million later the program has “delivered limited functionality and faced schedule delays as well as increasing stakeholder concerns

https://fedscoop.com/problem-project-threatens-progress-soci...

And that's just one instance.

Can you imagine raising $288 million from VCs for a software application while delivering so little?

But taxpayer money? Free and easy money to keep wasting coz no one cares. Tragedy of the commons.

For the main system they're also using COBOL, which has no Date data type, causing issues even in 2025.

>>ivewon+(OP)
> See how much hate DOGE gets for even proposing cuts or higher efficiencies

I think you should be aware that “proposing cuts” is not why people why DOGE got hate. I find it disappointing that serious people believe that.

>>ivewon+ye
>Can you imagine raising $288 million from VCs for a software application while delivering so little?

Yes, absolutely. I think you might be overestimating VC’s a little bit.

>>LPisGo+3f
It can happen yes, but VCs have very strong incentives to not waste their own money, if they feel like putting the effort into it. If they fail they may learn the lesson not to waste money, or even end up not having money to waste. In the government all the incentives are the opposite, to keep spending money or the budget would get reduced next year. If anyone tries to save costs, they make a lot of enemies both within and outside. They get nothing if they succeed, so the incentives are bad.

>>ivewon+ye
> Can you imagine raising $288 million from VCs for a software application while delivering so little?

What? You're imagining VCs caring about pizza money? Should I mention, perhaps, the AOL-TimeWarner merger? Or maybe AT&T buying DirecTV for $50B and essentially giving it away for $8B?

Heck, I was a part of an utterly failed project with a $150m budget (in 2005), in a large European company.

> For the main system they're also using COBOL, which has no Date data type, causing issues even in 2025.

And? They haven't missed a single payment day in all their existence, moving data between multiple types of media. While working with staff levels that won't even qualify as "skeleton" in plenty of companies.

>>ivewon+ye
Startup companies blow through hundreds of millions of VC dollars with little to show for it all the time. Theranos raised $700 million for a technology that never worked. Plenty of others wasted hundreds of millions building half-baked products that nobody wanted or that made no business sense. Remember Quibi?

>>cybera+E8
I switched away from AT&T. You even keep your number. Switching govt services not an option unless you take more extreme measures.

> USPS has also been great overall

USPS is an independent agency which is funded by its own fees charged to users, not taxpayer money. It's not like the other agencies.

From Wiki:

> The USPS is often mistaken for a state-owned enterprise or government-owned corporation (e.g., Amtrak) because it operates much like a business

It's also far from a monopoly unlike most other govt agencies and has competition in the form of UPS, Fedex, DHL, Amazon etc.

So it's not surprising that it runs better, if it loses user fees, it directly affects the bottomline and thus would have to downsize, no blank check from the taxpayer like other agencies have.

>>apical+7q
The difference is that those companies eventually fail. The govt has essentially limitless taxpayer money behind it(till a currency crisis like Argentina, Greece etc. happens taking down the entire economy) because paying it is enforced by threat of violence and it can borrow and print money as much as it wants with deficit spending.

Also Theranos was aiming for something very innovative that still does not exist, whereas the govt IT systems are essentially glorified CRUD apps(no doubt complicated and with tricky integrations and need for reliability and security). It's an example where VCs could've exerted more scrutiny but chose not to and wasted their own money, hopefully a lesson learnt. As taxpayers, we have far fewer options, we cannot just pass on paying out hard earned money if we don't want to "invest".

Another example, the Queensland payroll system cost $1.2 billion over 8 years to develop, repair and maintain, to pay just 87K people. The initial estimated budget? $6.9 million.

>>cybera+on
> Heck, I was a part of an utterly failed project with a $150m budget (in 2005), in a large European company

Was it a just a somewhat complex CRUD app like the SSA example or most govt IT projects? Or were you guys trying for something more complicated and innovative and failed?

>>ivewon+qj
I think you may have a flawed understanding of how VCs work. VCs generally care little for one company does. That’s what the whole “invest in 500 startups” strategy is about. Now a $200M investment probably starts to leave that range and enters the “throw weight around to win”, but generally they care little about the software except as a means to an end to get returns and business growth and software value are only loosely correlated.

>>ivewon+Fr
> I switched away from AT&T. You even keep your number. Switching govt services not an option unless you take more extreme measures.

I can vote for a politician to fix the government services. And the local politicians know that keeping the government running well enough is needed to be re-elected.

I have zero leverage on AT&T.

Some services can be government-operated or private. Trash collection is one of them, for example. I lived in many cities, and municipal trash collection companies were always better and not any more expensive.

>>ripjay+rt
It was an ERP application from a large three-letter European company. In other words, a CRUD app with lots of UI forms. Nothing innovative or particularly interesting.

The hardware to deploy it was alone a couple of million. At least, I got to play with some rather cool gear (for that time).

>>ivewon+Ys
> Also Theranos was aiming for something very innovative that still does not exist, whereas the govt IT systems are essentially glorified CRUD apps(no doubt complicated and with tricky integrations and need for reliability and security).

I worked both in the area of molecular biology and bioinformatics with some pretty nifty technology (which was later acquired by a large company). And in the area of giant ERP applications that are nothing but tons of boring forms.

I can confidently say that the complexity of ERP apps dwarfs anything that is needed for molecular biology.

>>cybera+sy
> I can vote for a politician to fix the government services. And the local politicians know that keeping the government running well enough is needed to be re-elected

That is one issue among several reasons to pick a politician. Also politicians have limited powers to fire non-performers which gets bogged down in the court system to fire just one person.

> I have zero leverage on AT&T.

People can switch away easier from companies, it happens all the time, companies lose and gain customers all the time. Bad or mediocre service has killed many companies, the effect is far greater than on governments because they get to fund themselves from you even if you don't like or want them. Govt is the ultimate monopoly.

>>ivewon+(OP)
> One big example is the DMV since almost every has experience dealing with it, long queue times are almost universal because no one gives a crap and it's very hard to fire a government employee.

I don't know what's wrong with the US, but here in Poland, there are hardly any queues at the (equivalent of) DMV. And we're nowhere near US's wealth levels, so public services here (in Poland) should be worse, not better. There's something very wrong in how the US is organizing its DMVs, if the queues are such an universal problem. But, it's not an issue with government services per se, just with this one instance of government service.

>>ivewon+ck1
How do you switch away from a company that has a monopoly in your area?

>>saagar+B03
You're on a forum for startup founders. Found a startup.

>>ivewon+te
Have you read the book "Recoding America"?

I have a feeling you might enjoy that book as it goes into a LOT of detail about government dysfunction with respect to software.

I found the book eye opening and personally it provided me with some new perspective.