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In order to verify my identity to access gov.uk services, the app complained that my Android 10 phone was too old (a curt "update to a newer version" was the only error message visible). It's already mental that you have to own a smartphone with google spyware to access government services (what about people who don't own such devices or don't know how to operate them?), but now even the second most recent version of android is not good enough.

I eventually borrowed a friend's phone. It proceeded to stonewall me and insist I was not a real person, again with no visible error message or explanation apart from a strange oscillating blue 3D head... Kafkaesque doesn't begin to describe it.

It's indeed one of the weirdest modern tech phenomena: you are blocked/flagged/shadowbanned/what have you by an inscrutable AI and given no reason or explanation, just a blank "you have been banned".

Speaking of, whatever happened to that federated(?) ID thing where you are given the choice of several companies like Experian to validate your identity? I signed up years ago to do one thing and never used it since.

Always seemed a bit odd to me, because I would have thought that even if the government didn't trust its own departments to validate government-issued documents securely (fair enough, actually, they'd probably leave it on a train), all they had to do is provide their own separate, secure, service. They say the government won't know who you're validating with, but why is that an issue anyway. At some point you have to trust the government if you're verifying your identity with their own documents in order to access government services.

Though I guess it's probably just because when they eventually do get hacked they can just blame the provider and ditch them publicly rather than have another IT disaster in the papers with their name on it.

I believe you are referring to the gov.uk Verify service [1]. It's still in existence, but on it's way out due to poor uptake.

It was pushed agressively at one point by GDS, but despite what it claims about being easy to use, it provided a poor user experience, with very high failure rates for certain demographics.

Universal login, which was the vision for this product for UK government services, is a seemingly appealing proposition but if a high percentage of people can't use it, it's pretty much doomed.

The various UK government departments adopted it sparingly or developed alternatives, which further undermined it.

1 - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/introducing-govuk...

I've used the UK verify service, and it was pretty horrible then. Only country I've seen do it somewhat well is Singapore, with Singpass.

My husband was not able to download his earnings report from the social security website because the verification system did not work for him. My guess is it's because he doesn't have a recent credit history (we've been debt free for five years now) but it worked fine for me so who knows?

The other option was to go in person to the local social security office, but at the time it was completely closed due to COVID.

I write guides for immigrants. It's eye-opening to see the sort of problems they face in a system that doesn't account for them.

People are often missing a lot of inherited context, like what the steps of the process are (for buying, insuring and registering a car), what the terms mean (all the different numbers and IDs).

Then it gets messier. Immigrants have to get everything at once: papers, permits, certificates, IDs, accounts. All of them depend on each other, and most of them take weeks to get. People need an income now. A big part of my work was to disentangle a few catch-22 situations around residence permits, bank accounts, apartments and health insurance.

I've talked to a few employees at the immigration office, and since all of them are native to this country, they seemed surprised that a whole Facebook community was dedicated to navigating their office and its requirements.

The same problems apply to tech, but it's worsened by the fact that the builders are well-paid people in developed Western countries, but the users can be anyone, anywhere.

I moved from Ireland to the UK - both ~are~ were members of the EU, and there was no visa requirement to move. The only thing I had to do when I got here was get a bank account and a national insurance number (think SSN) for tax calculations. I tried 6 high street banks (RBS, TSB, Santander, Barclays, Halifax and Nationwide) who would not give me a bank account without a utility bill for proof of address, and would not accept my tenancy agreement, however I couldn't get a utility bill without a direct debit. In the end, someone told me HSBC would give me a "passport" account, and I used that to bootstrap the rest of the process. It was an absolutely infuriating process full of "computer says no", and absolutely nobody willing to help.

I had a similar experience, and I had a passport to prove my UK citizenship. It's a giant knot where everything relies on something else and you need to keep at it until one thing let's you in. It felt impossible and I feel like I had the best case scenario; I can't imagine how people without a support network can do it.

They invest a bit in the initial development then call it a day. Another example is the chatbots fad: after the technology implementation there's almost no energy for actually training those bots, so you as user are served with a fancy and overpriced menu system.

Chatbots serve a real purpose: they hide information and frustrate users so that they will not request refunds and such.

They are also a stepping stone to real support personnel, and a subset of users fall off the stepping stone making support cheaper.

Which is why we need user-bots, that represent their clients interest with the same emotionless, ceaseless interest as a cooperation would represent its interests.

We're guilty of this, despite caring about the product and the users. It's hard to focus on maintenance and deep iteration when there's more critical (and cool) functionality to chase. Not to mention that iterative UX improvements have the same problem as negative results in academia - it's hard to get people excited about it.

That isn't realistically fixable unless companies are really willing to invest a lot more in testing. Most companies don't even have any user testing for products beyond what devs do on their own machines.

I realize that, it just put the entire software industry into perspective for me. We are building products for users that can afford to interface with them, and even then, it's not a guarantee that you're gonna get a great experience.

Here's to hoping that neither you or I ever become that irrelevant, because that doesn't look like a pretty existence to me.

For a government service, testing of older/lower performance devices should be part of the initial contract.

It often is, but will be tested to a "yes, it is technically possible" level.

How about devs who say "oh, its IE, its only 1% so we don't care"? What is the point of testing something that you know is not supported anyways?

I had the exact same experience. A barely smart phone being used to verify ID and we had to do the facial recognition more than 10 ten times, each time having to go through a whole step by step process to get there. And it still didn't work. I think he had to go an entirely different route in order to even do it. If he didn't have someone like me who could think systematically, there's no way he by himself or any non-technically minded person would be able to do it.

What does facial recognition have to do with it?

You had to take a picture of your face in order to match it with your ID or something like that. We took the picture ten different times in varying light conditions inside and out, and I don't know if the phone was too old or what but it always came back to an error.

> It was so Orwellian to see this kind of UX on a device that wasn't new (and of course, how is someone on unemployment expected to purchase a new phone?) I truly wonder how many people have starved because they didn't have access to devices that allowed them to collect their unemployment through this platform. It really kept me up that night.

It may be disheartening to hear, but this is by design. A (Western) government cannot get away with entirely not providing or dismantling basic elements of a social safety net (unemployment insurance, healthcare insurance, disability assistance) for publicity reasons... but what perfectly works is to make the system as complex and hoop-jumping-dependent as possible to reduce the number of claims:

- requiring modern devices (or not making sure that older devices work too, like you witnessed) is a major hurdle many people who are too poor and under-served by libraries or other public Internet access

- requiring in-person presence with short opening hours during weekdays discriminate against people who have to take care of sick relatives/children, have to work two or more jobs or have certain mental health issues that make following up with appointments very difficult (e.g. some of the strains of autism)

- requiring specific forms of ID or other paper documents (e.g. birth certificates) can be almost impossible (or, very expensive) to solve for people who have lost their belongings/are homeless

- requiring proof of residence is an automatic exclusion of the homeless

- complex forms with bureaucratic language discriminate against illiterate people, non-English speakers and frankly, most people who don't know or can't afford a lawyer to help them out

- automatically rejecting the first claim and only allowing after an appeal / a lawsuit is commonplace for disability claims, it is very effective in "weeding out" poor and already troubled people

The ones that do not require a lot of bureaucracy are not governments... the void that helps those left behind by governmental bureaucracy is more often than not religiously affiliated: churches, Salvation Army, other charities - but unlike government (which is theoretically bound by constitutions and anti-discrimination laws), they are free to choose whom they help and how much.

And now: good luck if you're a publicly outed LGBT member, a person of color or otherwise marginalized person right in a religious-conservative stronghold. The government won't help you as you can't jump the hoops that were designed to be that way, and the "private sector" won't help you as you are not mainstream conformant. This threat is what makes dysfunctional government bureaucracy so insidious.

Well, that's super cynical.

The less cynical take is so many people abuse the system that we have put in anti abuse protection. However the end result is if you can figure out the system you are abusing it as anyone who can figure it out can get a real job and care for themselves

> The less cynical take is so many people abuse the system that we have put in anti abuse protection. However the end result is if you can figure out the system you are abusing it as anyone who can figure it out can get a real job and care for themselves

This is even more cynical, and just flat out wrong. Just because you have succesfully navigated the system doesn't matter you can hold down a permanent full time job. Also, "so many people abuse the system" is just nonsense. FullFact [0] estimates that £2bn was lost to benefit fraud in the UK, some of which is reclaimed after the fact. This is about 1% of the benefit budget, or 0.01% of the UK's budget, before any of the reclaimed amounts.

[0] https://fullfact.org/online/comparing-benefit-and-tax-fraud/

And depressingly accurate.

I've seen and tried to help people who are navigating these systems, and this describes my observations each time.

I live in Texas fwiw.

UK's Conservative Party once specifically went about ordering a system so it would fail certain percentage of people, then threw Atos (the contractor) under the bus when it came out, IIRC.

Literally UK government policy under Theresa May: guidance notes to the home office were leaked that instruct the bureaucracy to create a "climate of hostility".

I'd say it is super realistic

can totaly relate from experience; last example was my wife trying to signup for our municipalies self-serving portal (...service?) and beeing utterly frustrated about roadblocks/error-messages and unhelpful service personal. it often looks like nobody is even trying anymore.

thou, shifting the "navigation of service meshes" away from buerocatics, law literacy and ppl-skills to proficiency with electronic devices has done little for the kafkaesqueness.

From your name I'd guess you are a fellow German... I can relate with what you say, too :'D

> it often looks like nobody is even trying anymore.

The key thing behind that is diffusion of responsibility: everyone knows that shit is broken beyond belief, but since there are so many different layers of responsibility, politicians (with whom the responsibility should rest!) often are successful in deflecting liability in a lot of different ways. The end result is that nothing changes.

To be fair, public libraries generally have computers suitable for this purpose.

For that you have to be living in proximity to one and be able to afford the time and money to get there.

Access to government services should be a right accessible to everyone, not just the select few that can jump through intentional hoops!

Are public libraries not readily accessible to everyone? I thought that was one of the few government services still running fairly well.

Every town I’ve lived in has had at least one well run library if not a network

I live centrally, in my town. The nearest library is an hour walk. The bus would be at least 30 minutes. I'd have to know beforehand that I need to reserve a computer before using it, and that spots fill up quick. I'd need to get a library card to reserve the computer, which I need to do in person. I'd need the bus schedules, and presumably my device might not be capable of accessing that or I might not be knowledgeable enough. I'd need to have cash on hand to pay the bus fare, so I'd need to find an ATM or convenience store that offers cashback.

This labyrinthian effort is basically what being a poor person is like, on a daily basis.

I haven't gotten a library card in a long time, but I think you need proof of a permanent address in the same jurisdiction that funds the library, so if you're homeless, you can't use it (though homeless often use libraries to sleep and wash in, even if they can't use the actual library services).

No library I've ever been in has required anything for someone to walk in and read or use the computers.

My local library requires a card to use the computers, with the exception of the ones to search the database and one public machine.

That being said, the librarian's there are quite helpful to those who need assistance with anything like that - going ao far as to ait with people and help them navigate it.

It’s gross, and all because of the inability of Congress to allow a rational identity framework and the investments made to make it difficult for poor and minority people to vote.

State Departments of Labor have access to extensive consumer data and are unable to utilize it effectively. ID.me shouldn’t exist.