Would it be crazy yo have the government maintain such a database and make it available to anyone? It seems like the ideal place to join forces and avoid data duplication.
Do you want those people managing something like maps or places on maps?
Yes. The USPS is actually pretty good at it too. They even have their own API you can use.
>Think about your interactions with the government
My public roads, building codes, food safety, food affordability, stable power grids, advanced medical care, space exploration.
The government is plenty capable of doing good things, however people letting carefully crafted legislation, get passed or even created, that supports private interests is a societal illness, not a fundamental issue with government capabilities.
In my opinion, the USPS is mostly an advertisement delivery system, and every once in a while they deliver a very important letter from the IRS so that you have to look through all of it.
I don’t know how we tolerate this federal system that is literally 80% spam advertisements
At my job I use APIs from the EPA and EIA, and they are stable, well-documented, and generally pleasant to use. I can also email an actual human with questions and get quick responses, which I can't do with Google. I have no concerns about the APIs ever disappearing because the PM got bored or wanted a promotion, or because they couldn't extract enough money from users.
I think whoever manages these services would do an excellent job running a mapping service or Places API, although obviously it would be hard to get traction now that Google Maps is so established.
Some of the features that make Google Maps useful, like GPS and public transit arrival times, are already based on government services.
On the other hand, the USPTO patent database is nearly impossible for anyone other than a professional to navigate. Their search sucks.
Since you mentioned taxes: the fact that Intuit and H&R Block have successfully prevented the IRS from doing what nearly everyone wants: file your taxes for you, for free. For the vast majority of taxpayers, they could do that, yet the political pressure from paid tax preparers have prevented it, at least up to now.
And this illustrates the flaw with your starry-eyed Pollyanna-ism: no matter how honest & hard-working the bureaucrats might be, they're still accountable to corrupt pressures.
The 1950 census data, recently released, also sucks. To find one family whose exact address I wasn't sure of, I had to manually open about 50 strips of census taker daily records and decipher the hand-written names & addresses. Merely finding these 50 strips took more effort than nearly anyone would exert.
Their Search failed to find the family. I don't anyone could figure this out unless they were extremely motivated.
And last but certainly not least, let's look at the Obamacare website rollout, which got a Cabinet secretary fired.
So don't give us a couple good anecdotes and say, "look, the government works great!"