[jefft255]

Québec's government has historically been incompetent regarding anything digital (a lot of their website are still barely usable), but I want to give credit where credit is due: their vaccine appointment website as well as their proof-of-vaccination has been really well done.

[jplr8922]

Quebec government has problematic policies regarding the hiring of devs. They treat tech workers like the rest of their unionized workforce, and their wage + title depends on seniority. As a result, competent programmers avoid the provincial employer like the plague. Most IT work there is actually done by ''consultant'' firms like CGI, who deploys the devs for a 1-3 years contract. I had an interview with them, and I was told during the meeting that I was probably ''too fast for the working environment'' and was not hired. (no joke).

The culture is super weird. As an example, the focus on the french language : a dev once told me that, during a government contrat, he had to work with a french translated C++ STD library... Finally, by law, the only criteria Quebec can use to choose a external private business to complete a project is the lowest bid. They are not aiming for quality.

Finally since some people in the far regions of the province do not have access to high speed internet, phone + mail + fax is still the implicit norm to contact the government. Quebec public services does not have a strong tech culture for many reasons. We are fortunate that they did not mess up the vaccine process.

[hyakosm]

They've made a lot of efforts recently. Their new official website (quebec.ca) is clean, fast and straightforward and the new website for public healthcare (RAMQ) is nice but they still have a lot of improvements to do for administrative procedures. In february I had to renew my health insurance card: I had to call them to send me a paper form to fill and send back by post. Few weeks later they sent me a (paper) mail saying that my new card "will be coming shortly" and few days after I received my card.

[Naga]

I've been making my way through RAMQ's system. I actually think its deliberate to keep people from signing up. I'm a new resident of Quebec (within the last few years) and I had to prove I moved to Quebec when I first registered with RAMQ, then prove a efw years after that I still lived in Quebec. Their bar for residency is super high too - leases, property tax and utilities do not count (although they're good enough for me to pay taxes and vote here). They asked me to send bank and credit card statements to show that I'm actually making purchases in Quebec. This is an issue for me as I work and shop in Ontario as I live on the border. Apparently it's a requirement of the Canada Health Act to only buy groceries in the province you reside in.

[nikisweeting]

As an immigrant from the US, I find most of Quebec's government websites to be quite good actually. But maybe that's just my low standards.

[monkeybutton]

Most government or government-adjacent (sépaq, Hydro Québec) websites are pretty decent. There's a few awful exceptions like the SAAQ disabling their online services at 11pm, as if their servers need to go to bed? Or the city of Longueuil's tax portal which looks like it is from the 90s!

[Sanzig]

Hydro Québec lets me download a CSV of my energy usage for my own analytics if I want. I find that pretty neat.

[belval]

Hydro-Québec is a weird (but great!) example of government intervention in utility. We get the lowest prices and the company is overall well run.

[monkeybutton]

On the topic of Hydro Québec, there's just something about the scale of turning the fifth largest asteroid impact crater into a reservoir for hydroelectricity that is awe inspiring. Why don't we see those sorts of aspirational mega projects for the greater good in Canada anymore?

[nikisweeting]

Yesss. I'm a huge fan of Hydro Quebec :D https://github.com/pirate/quebec-power-grid-talk

[belval]

I think the stars have to be aligned for a project like that to work. You need buy-in from first-nations, a charismatic PM that won't get thorn apart for spending prodigious amount of money and general public goodwill towards the objective.

Truly is a thankless job.

[jefft255]

I interact the most with AFE (aide financière aux études) and FRQNet (grad school scholarships). These websites look like they weren't updated since about 1999 and are really, really counter-intuitive to use. Admittedly, they're also probably not the most used websites, and not high in their priority list.

[cryptoz]

Can you still catch a bus in Montreal at 26:30h? :) Used to be able to see bus schedules online for busses STM well-passed the 24h mark. Something about the technology not being ready for late-night busses on the 'next day' being attached to 'today'? Or something.

[nikisweeting]

Their immigration and SAAQ sites are what I've interacted with most recently. Both "just worked" and had reasonable UI and UX without having to disable adblockers or use IE or any nonsense like that. There are small nits occasionally, but by and large they work for their intended purposes I've found.

[paledot]

I believe it's more prevalent in Europe, but if your bus or train departs at 23:30, it will arrive at 24:15, not 0:15. That's deliberate.

No idea if they still do it since I haven't looked at a paper schedule in years.

[filearts]

Not anymore. The busses only come every 5m90s on that route.

[Rebelgecko]

When I visited Quebec I was actually surprised by how common it was for the government to use cryptographic signatures. For example the wingdings hieroglyphics that get printed on every receipt (I guess to prevent tax evasion?).

Edit: an example- https://mobile.twitter.com/nneonneo/status/92323100662615654...

[monkeybutton]

I love how often this comes up; whenever someone nerdy visits Montreal the first reaction to seeing those wing-dings is "I must know more!". Like this thread here: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/81attendees/fEjDmtd8Kf...

[Bayart]

I get the sense everybody thinks their particular government is specifically bad at IT services.

[graeme]

Quebec actually specifically has a reputation of being slow to adopt technology relative to Canada.

Here’s some results of a longstanding poll. There have also been various official reports to this effect.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/sci-tech/canada-s-francophones...

[vkou]

I think a number of Canadian IT services are actually quite good. Stats Canada, for instance, is a national treasure.

I've found the CBSA to also be fairly reasonable, but I only needed one thing from it (and a FOIA request).

[totony]

The QR code tech is good, but its not from Quebec afaik

>vaccine appointment website as well as their proof-of-vaccination has been really well done.

The appointment website is bad:

- No date search (have to click multiple locations just to see they're full)

- Multiple popups everytime you click on a location (are you over 18? Etc. Which could have been saved in cookie)

- They don't reserve the time you selected while filling the (long) PII form just before confirming. This can cause someone to snap it from under you. Either ask PII before clicking the time or reserve it would fix this

[brunoqc]

> their vaccine appointment website

It would have been even better if they did the "your ticket is reserved" with a countdown to give you time to fill the form.

[jefft255]

Yep... that was a bit stressful

[m-p-3]

Some sites like the Carnet Santé are actually quite well done and easy to navigate.