Thread by @kevinakwok

Lots of anger on the process for getting vaccine

Stepping back, reminded of universality of rising consumer expectations

Once people had world class consumer apps better ent apps was inevitable

So too will it be for govt services. The frustration is painful but also great sign

It's easy to bash the digital experiences of govt services. Often rightly so

But sobering to realize that much of user improvement of ent products has only been in last *decade*

Progress get most pulled when consumers flip from default satisfied to upset at lack of improvement

Consumer products have pushed forward user expectations, and they carry that over in all areas

You can call that the hedonic treadmill, the red queen effect, the divine discontent of customers, consumer inflation, or anything else

But it's a big part of what pressures progress

And it's been remarkable to see enterprise products today and how much they have improved in focus on user experience

This isn't solely due to user expectations ofc. Many other factors like who is paying, product driven acq, and more

But it's only natural we should see ent lag

consumer. And govt lag enterprise even more. (why is a whole essay or book that could be written. And the stack ranking of fields by this is an entire investment thesis)

None of this is to say that we should let govt off the hook. The opposite is true. Pressure must continue to

be felt by govts to deliver better value to their constituents. There's no tech company whose product quality matters more than our govt's. Whether you're a republican or democrat

The government's efficacy in improving lives of its citizens is bipartisan

If you're a small govt republican, we can only have a small govt if that govt is best able to do the important things ONLY it can do as well as possible due to tech leverage and good digital experiences

If you're a big govt democrat, there is no better way to convince people we should be increasing govt programs than by them being seen to be high efficacy and great at improving people's lives

Anyways, much more could be written on this

But I've found important for me to remember
- we need to expect better from the govt on these modern services
- Public frustration and increased expectations is the first step to progress
- The work we take for granted in tech will tak

e time to get adopted well in govt
- there are many people both in govt and tech that are doing a lot to improve it
- there are many more that will be required to deliver these outcomes best at the scale of the United States