[eminence32]

I bet the US government has lots of useful websites that I've never even heard of. But every now and again I randomly stumble across one (like the one from your comment), and it makes me wonder if there is a "discovery problem" here. What other useful govt sites are out there, but are unknown to me.

[shadowgovt]

The discovery problem is not only known, it's writ large. There is a vast bureaucracy of benefits available to Americans that most Americans don't know about because the creation of the programs rarely includes advertising in the budget.

If you've ever seen the "question mark vest guy" (Matthew Lesko, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Lesko), who offers book on federal programs available and how to take advantage of them... He's been criticized as a charlatan or misleading people, or encouraging people to "freeload," but here's the thing... He's really quite sincere. He believes the US government bureaucracy has failed in its duty of public information and education and is full of under-utilized programs that, as a result, become tools for the informed to siphon resources from those the programs were intended to help. He thinks that's unfair. The "Free Money Now" book covers and TV advertisements are employed because his target audience is assumed to not be savvy enough to do the research themselves, so he's trying to reach them with noise and spectacle where quiet black-and-white announcements buried in the back pages of local newspapers have already failed (and the fact that he started his work in the era where the easiest way to reach his target audience was still books because the sorts of people who didn't know about benefits programs they were eligible for were strongly correlated with lack of Internet access, not surprisingly).

[dfxm12]

There is a vast bureaucracy of benefits available to Americans that most Americans don't know about because the creation of the programs rarely includes advertising in the budget.

It's intentional. In addition to the lack of advertising, making people fill out needless/confusing forms, etc. also filters out people who are legitimately entitled to government benefits. It's a special type of cruelty to dangle a benefit behind so much red tape in front of people who don't have the time or know-how to deal with it!

The US COVID test program, seems good at first blush. On the one hand, it was a breath of fresh air that all you have to do is go to one website and fill out one very short form. On the other, the parameters of the program were 4 tests per address. USPS already knows every address, so why did I even have to bother filling out the form? Why aren't they just sending out the tests?! There are going to be people who want/need the tests but won't get them because of the bureaucracy.

[hooande]

They aren't sending the tests out, in part, because 1/3 of Americans would performatively destroy them on social media. Not to mention that the tests cost money and sending them to people who didn't ask for them isn't good practice.

The government generally has a responsibility to avoid waste, fraud and abuse. If they send something to everyone who qualifies then sooner or later it will be abused or inefficient, and those will be the stories that make the news.

[dfxm12]

The covid test program is a universal benefit. If someone wants to burn them, that's their prerogative. I don't care. What's good practice is giving people the benefits they're entitled to. I don't understand why sending them to people who didn't explicitly ask for them isn't good practice. If there's an explicit opt out, OK, that's different. Benefits really shouldn't have to be opt-in though. Requiring opt-in costs money ands slows down, maybe even prevents, some receiving their benefit.

That's the problem, when you make it so hard for people who need benefits to get them, when you trap them in a constant web of confusing paperwork and means testing (and don't forget, all this bureaucracy, developing and reviewing paperwork, ain't cheap, either), it's easy to find fraud based on technicality, by filling out a form incorrectly, even if you're really entitled to something. It's also easy to make someone give up because they don't have the time or access to resources required to sign up.

In addition, with a lot of overhead, it makes it easier for states to abuse the system [0] as well. I get that this is a big mental block to overcome, but saying the government has to avoid waste and fraud in this way is a bit of a cop out.

0 - https://www.clickorlando.com/news/2021/07/14/florida-to-pay-...

[EricE]

All the information in his book is freely available too: https://pueblo.gpo.gov/Publications/PuebloPubs.php

He makes it easier to find since he actively advertised on TV, but still probably isn't worth the fee for that convenience.

[shadowgovt]

Probably not worth it to you and me. For the target audience, the fact that the linked site doesn't have "tangible dimensions" (i.e. I don't know where I am "in" the site) and can't just be read front to back is already daunting.

I have relatives who have Lesko's book and just browse through it in the bathroom. It's comforting to them not only how comprehensive it is, but that in some sense it has a beginning and an end; when they finish the book, they have some kind of confidence that the percentage of programs they're aware of is now large. That might be a false confidence, but the sense it's possible keeps them reading. Hard to do that with a searchable index.

[kibwen]

Here's one I stumbled upon recently: the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has an interactive sea level rise map where you can see whether a given location in the US will suffer flooding/inundation from sea level rise based on the value the user selects: https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/#

[jrwr]

Interesting thing with that tool, it doesn't show any rise in the great lakes, I wonder if they would rise at all.

[EricE]

They are higher than the ocean (Niagara Falls!) so no - unless the paths between them and the path to the ocean gets blocked they won't rise.

[deeg]

All else being the same I would expect the great lakes to rise. My guess is that the lake levels are so strongly tied to rainfall patterns that it's pointless to predict their future levels right now.

[EricE]

I was looking at all the domains in .gov for a project at work and there are indeed some fascinating ones out there. Lots of abandoned stuff too.

If you want a fascinating rabbit hole: https://18f.gsa.gov/2014/12/18/a-complete-list-of-gov-domain...