[murph-almighty]

Secondhand story:

I briefly interned with a state judiciary's IT department around 2015 and got to get lunch with the CIO. He described to me how most court filings in the state had been manual prior to 2008 when the mortgage crisis hit and judges in the tax courts got _slammed_ with cases surrounding foreclosures. This , in turn, drove a need to develop a platform to automate the process of filing a case. It started with the tax court and gradually expanded to automate filings for other court divisions as well (e.g. Family, Civil).

I wouldn't be shocked if the revelation of "holy shit no one can file for unemployment" drove such an investment. I honestly think the next generation of politicians should take a page from product owners by isolate some shitty process that they'd have jurisdiction over, and finding some way to automate it. Bonus points if it's right before a watershed moment- imagine if someone had considered the problem you described prior to the coronavirus epidemic.