Wow, I just assumed it was some kind of auth flow the government runs themselves and never did any research
Wow, I just assumed it was some kind of auth flow the government runs themselves and never did any research
It's how we ended up in a world where some 70% of all retail transaction is now fundamentally brokered via private institutions using not-real-money (in the sense that credit on a credit card is "numbers the private institution tracks themselves" until the cash clears, and most cards have a loyalty discount program that sums up to the dollars spent on the credit card having different value than bare cash), in spite of the fact that control of and guarantees for the monetary system are something a government should have as a core competency. So on 70% of transactions, Americans get nickel-end-dimed by private institutions for basic commerce (on top of government taxes; the private tax atop the public tax).
Fix that aspect and the situation will improve significantly.
No, no they don't. They would love to build in-house, but are constrained in what salary ranges they can offer.
The other challenge US government faces is that they continuously get their chain yanked by congress. I've read many stories of (corporate) management incompetence over the years, but they mostly pale in relation to the ability of congress to completely change priorities and goals every 6-12 months.
Even the most disfunctional corporation has some kind of force/attraction towards having a product line with an outward semblance of consistency and cohesion.
[1] https://federalnewsnetwork.com/agency-oversight/2022/02/irs-...