U.S. Digitalization in 2025

I spent over an hour at the Post Office today applying for a passport for my son. I suppose in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t the worst experience or the biggest time suck, but I showed up on time for my appointment only to wait 45 minutes before being helped.

As anyone would guess, the application process was filled out on paper and we had to print everything to bring to the post office. Once there, the post office worker had to hand print more things to finish the application. When I left, I could tell her was preparing the application to be mailed to the Government.

This is the year 2025 in San Francisco nonetheless and we still have yet to find a way to digitalize passport applications. Of course, this isn’t the only example of where our Federal, State, and Local governments are severely behind in tech.

I have no interest in helping fix the government’s issues, but I imagine that with proper incentives in place, there would be many entrepreneurs who would step up to fix these antiquated systems and processes.