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Startups do well when they improve things for people who vote with their wallets (buying this or that service).

Bureaucracies though are a completely different beast. Better value? Happier customers? They care not a bit. You need different levers to (sloooowly) move them.

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Exactly. You can't enter the market and provide better service for "government administration." You could offer a service to help a person, but the person still has to go through it all.

What are those levers? Are you aware of any examples where an effort to move them was successful?

I think one common way is to get a high ranking bureaucrat to mandate the change. It is not a guarantee, but a good enabler. I suspect pride, shame (you still use paper receipts for this?), media or even bribes are used.

For examples, I would look at automating standard government functions (e.g., car registrations, toll collections, etc.). Putting those online leaves some clerks unemployed and is thus often resisted by default, so someone found a working path for each of those

I think competition among countries actually helps. Case in point: this visa program. They are trying to make it more streamlined and more attractive with a longer expiration. It is improvement in the right direction.

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