[jamil7]

In theory, maybe. I think in practise, in the case of somewhere like Germany, they realistically just won't implement the hypothetical feature and let productivity of employees drop even further. There is no motivation or reward in the public sector here for anyone to do anything better or more efficiently. I'm maybe overly cynical about the public sector's ability to get anything done here, I would like to be proven wrong, though.

[binary132]

It seems like maybe you’re assuming that state employees would be the ones building the required features, but I would guess these are simply going to be makework contracts going to (hopefully) local engineering firms.

[kenjackson]

No. I’m not assuming that. I assume the governments will have to fund the work, but they will contract it out. But even then governments have struggled to deliver on this.

And even when governments have the funding they tend to be horrible at specifying and getting delivery of technology - at least that’s been the case for the US.

[acdha]

> And even when governments have the funding they tend to be horrible at specifying and getting delivery of technology - at least that’s been the case for the US.

This is the dysfunctional contracting model combined with “cost savings” removing technical civil service positions, meaning that the government often lacks people who are qualified to review or manage contractors. Groups like the US digital service, 18F, etc. which have staff have much better track records.

[freetanga]

Funny. I thought “ok, yet another generation of Accenture/TCS/Fujitsu large scale government projects that cost billions and fail to deliver a single thing”

[jamil7]

But look! A clickable prototype!