Do we need more SoS offices?

[rb336]

Those self-serve kiosks are nice - maybe add them at Meijer, Kroger, etc?

[Atticus]

Those self-serve kiosks are nice - maybe add them at Meijer, Kroger, etc?

And who maintains them? Who fixes them when something goes wrong [[which happens to any software system)? And the answer to that is a technician who costs a lot more to employ than a SOS clerk.

Would kiosks be more convenient and helpful to people? Probably. But they would cost more, not less. Great ideas, but no one wants more taxes. They just want to complain about what they don’t have, but don’t want to pay more to fix the system.

[Wesley Mouch]

And who maintains them? Who fixes them when something goes wrong [[which happens to any software system)? And the answer to that is a technician who costs a lot more to employ than a SOS clerk.

Would kiosks be more convenient and helpful to people? Probably. But they would cost more, not less. Great ideas, but no one wants more taxes. They just want to complain about what they don’t have, but don’t want to pay more to fix the system.

While on the surface this is an absurd comment, it may be true. Governmental IT systems are often highly customized for individual gov't customers -- to meet their highly regimented requirements.

When banks first installed ATMs, there were often live clerks in the background re-typing the orders into legacy systems*. Once they proved the viability of the idea, they changed their legacy systems, and their processes. Here, I don't mean just their software, but the workflow. For example, City of Detroit had [[has?) cashiers that by labor contract had to process payments. So even if you had online payments, it was processed by a card-carrying employee. Private companies find ways to change this. Or they simply get replaced by a new company that does it without a cashier, a cash register, and a heavy rubber stamp.

OTOH, governments often can't or won't change their legacy systems and workflows. It requires a fight with entrenched managers and workers who benefit from the status quo.

Government is not the land of 'creative destruction', but of 'status quo'. Improvements like on-line license plate renewals might actually cost more. So you're often right, Atticus.