Some “nice” bits of government I’ve hit recently in Canada:
When my kid was born I was given a convenient form to fill out that registered my child’s birth, applied for a SIN, applied for the relevant tax breaks, and registered me to be contacted about options for saving for my child’s education.
My city has a nice little online portal where I can see my tax and utility bills, register city maintenance issues, apply for local city programs, etc. It’s pretty decent.
Oh, and the CRA’s NETFILE system is pretty neat. In addition to the expected submitting of taxes online, banks, employers, etc can send documents to netfile which my tax software can automatically retrieve and ingest.
Not saying that any of the above are perfect, but government can (and does sometimes) produce decent systems. Of course, there are always bad parts - I’ve recently had friend and family deal with immigration and death systems that badly need a redesign.
When my kid was born I was given a convenient form to fill out that registered my child’s birth, applied for a SIN, applied for the relevant tax breaks, and registered me to be contacted about options for saving for my child’s education.
My city has a nice little online portal where I can see my tax and utility bills, register city maintenance issues, apply for local city programs, etc. It’s pretty decent.
Oh, and the CRA’s NETFILE system is pretty neat. In addition to the expected submitting of taxes online, banks, employers, etc can send documents to netfile which my tax software can automatically retrieve and ingest.
Not saying that any of the above are perfect, but government can (and does sometimes) produce decent systems. Of course, there are always bad parts - I’ve recently had friend and family deal with immigration and death systems that badly need a redesign.