Maybe the only example I’ve seen of technology failing to keep up with proposed changes to the law/policy, usually it’s the other way around:<p>> New York, she added, also had a distinctly punitive approach when calculating benefits for part-time workers that withholds 25 percent of what they receive in a week for each day they work, no matter how many hours they put in. That means that if an unemployed actress spent just an hour or two a day three days a week delivering groceries for a service like Instacart, she would forfeit 75 percent of her weekly check.<p>> Legislation to change the rule appeared to have the support of Mr. Cuomo and legislative leaders last year, she said, but no bill was ever signed into law. Mr. Blum said he was told why: The Labor Department’s primitive computers could not be reprogrammed quickly enough to make the adjustment.<p>So they failed to modernize the technology and then used the outdated system as an excuse not to modernize the law.
The issue is not "why don't they upgrade the system" but the issue is "does it do what is required of it by those who sign the cheques"?<p>Sadly, being a "hostile environment" for claiming benefit is <i>exactly</i> what large numbers of welfare systems the world over are designed to do.<p>It has taken a decade for America's Underclass to claw its way back to parity - given how many more people are affected this time round, I doubt any country, even US can afford to stall so many of its citizens for so long again.<p>We can mail everyone a cheque. That might be the simplest solution all round.
You can take a picture, convert it to PDF, and fax it... all on your phone. Some apps offer this for $$$, but it's possible to get it all done for free using websites (take pic -> convert to pdf online -> fax with faxzero.com). Some paid apps even mimic a scanned copy by having you take multiple shots and reconstructing what the paper looks like into PDF automatically.<p>The government will always be slower to respond to change, so it's sad to hear a story like this. However the author had an excellent opportunity to educate its readers, but instead focused on the fear factor ("<i>...he had to go to a Staples store in the middle of a pandemic...</i>") - no, he didn't have to do that. Pretending the only way to send a fax involves finding a fax machine is disingenuous.
Same thing happened to a relative on mine two weeks ago when she tried to apply for unemployment.<p>The state web site wanted additional documentation, and because the walk-in offices are closed, the only allowed method of delivering the documents was by fax.<p>I signed up for an e-fax service and sent the paperwork for her. She also mailed a copy just in case, though that wasn't listed as an approved method of sending in paperwork.<p>While I think the state should be able to accept paperwork uploaded to its web site, I understand them not wanting to do that. With the way we've seen unemployment insurance web sites overloaded to the point of crashing across the country, uploading is no longer as reliable as fax. Some would say it never was.<p>E-mail is a worse solution, IMO. I say this based on the number of misdirected e-mails I receive in my commercial mailboxes from people who mistake one of the web sites I run for all kind of businesses from Boeing to hospitals. Millions of people think nothing of putting all of their personal, exploitable information in an e-mail to a stranger.<p>I work in the healthcare space, and the social media guy says that people are forever sending him very personal health information through Facebook, Twitter, and other insecure methods. Or worse — when he posts something about a particular condition, hundreds of people will post photos of themselves asking if he thinks they have it, too.<p>Fax isn't perfect. But it is far better than what Silicon Valley has given us to date.
Posted this on twitter, and will re-offer here. At my company
, we have had to build an e-fax platform due to faxing still being used heavily in the medical space. If anyone needs to fax documents for unemployment, DM me on twitter or email me (email in HN profile) and I'll set you up so that you can fax for free.
This is an example of administrative burden. In this case, it's due to bureaucratic incompetence, but it is often an intentional policy lever to limit access to benefits:<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/28/upshot/administrative-burden-quiz.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/28/upshot/admini...</a><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/upshot/medicaid-enrollment-obstacles-kentucky-work-requirement.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/upshot/medicaid-enrollmen...</a>
I have a digital signature for all my online interactions with the government. In Sweden, for example, there is a system named BankID that is used to access your bank account or pay your taxes.<p>The last time I used a fax was one connected to a Windows 2000 server in a small company. So, I will use a scanner and use the shares fax printer. Thanks is almost 20 years ago.<p>I am surprised how low tech the USA is. I would have expected something like that in a small countryside town, but never in a major city.<p>What's the reason for such a sad state of technology? I do not find it reasonable nor cost effective.
"Ms. Steffens said that Connecticut has had to resort to recruiting retirees who knew how to program in COBOL, a nearly extinct computer language."<p>I work at fortune 25. We are training college grad COBOL. It may be endangered but it won't be extinct for decades.
I'm idly wondering how today's "modern" Java* micro-service buzzword driven setups will look to someone who has to maintain it 40+ years later.<p>Maybe COBOL and mainframe wasn't that bad after all.
Can we get a fax.gov?<p>It's great that there are so many websites that can fax a PDF for you, but theres good cause to not trust them with your private information. Especially given the sort of information a Government service needs to process a claim.<p>Until the Government can figure out how to make usable websites, fax.gov would be a safer fallback.<p>It can charge a small fee for service, and maybe whitelist known Government fax numbers (to prevent scammers from convincing people to send data to a scam number).
Is anyone working on scaling up approaches like the US Digital Service? It is clear that government is often shafted by contractors that spend very little of the project budget on programmers, and it's starting to hurt people (rather than just being a tax on progress).
I've applied for jobless and other benefits on new York and never used a fax machine. I'd complain that the job listings are choked with spam (e.g. A job listed in Ithaca is really in Syracuse, nope, really in Atlanta) but other than that their systems work OK.<p>The leader of my friend's coven wrote new printer drivers for 390 mainframes because IBM couldn't be bothered to support enough printer ports that NY needs to support the mandate of turning around paperwork in 2 days.<p>NY really does it: I get my tax returns freaky fast compared to the federal gov. Drivers license and car permit renewals are fast, permits to stock tripod grass carp, whatever.
Yeah, we get that a lot. Its amazing how many faxes we send for students. In a bigger city the library or a UPS store (or equivalent) can be used, but here we do it for them.<p>Its the same for things that won't ship to a PO box, as we get some student shipments for students who haven't figured out how to write a BS address the UPS guy would figure out. Expecting people to have actual addresses that result in home delivery is just not something that you can depend on in the US.
Wow. This problem exists in my country's gov entities too. Only as a result of public pressure they finally enacted the "faxes law" demanding public entities to allow digital means of contact. Now they struggle to enforce the law and faxes are still bottle-necking administrative processes.
I used to use online fax services but I never quite felt comfortable with them having my data. So last time I had to, I looked into it a bit and it turns out Twillio has a programmatic fax option, so I signed up for a fax-enabled number and put it in a lambda [1]. Upload the fax somewhere accessible (e.g. dropbox/s3) and sent the url to the handler.<p>It ended up being really cheap/easy so I keep paying for the fax number now just in case I ever need to do it again.<p>[1] - <a href="https://github.com/J-Swift/lamda-starters/blob/master/examples/node_twilio_faxer.js" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/J-Swift/lamda-starters/blob/master/exampl...</a>
I'm certainly not justifying the state of affairs, but there are a lot of private institutions that still operate with faxes as well. They'll accept an original document either snail-mailed or faxed. The easier and quicker option is obviously fax.<p>Of course the fax encoding and their document management system will likely muddy the details up. So the actual person processing the document will call to confirm the details, and half the time you end up emailing them a crystal clear image file anyway.<p>I think it's more a legal technology and workflow problem than a computing technology problem. When fax machines were new technology, the legal work was done to bless accepting facsimiles of raised seal documents. Now "modern" B2B faxing works good enough, so this work hasn't been done for emailed images. (And ironically with a good scan you can actually see the physical relief of a raised seal)<p>FWIW another thing I've found is that even when you can upload image files directly to a document management system, you likely want those to be black and white (<i>not</i> greyscale!), otherwise they will be turned to black and white with an unpredictable threshold, also destroying details.
"Jot down your specific request and any relevant particulars. Enclose your card. Have your man bring it around and I'll ascertain it makes its way into the right hands. Expect to be notified by post on any conclusions, settlements or further necessary queries. Yours, ~~~~~~~"
You can blame the government for that one (not specifically BECAUSE it is the government). They made rules about privacy during an era when tech was still growing. With banking, education, and healthcare, this is a norm. You have to fax because somehow computers are "scary and hard to understand!" so we just still use fax machines.<p>This is also what happens when you have a government that doesn't act proactively to hire people who are competent and gets people as the lowest bidder or a stable wage that never.changes...
Why rewrite a system that's working? This is why. You can't just coast on the amazing system someone built in the 1970s. Because in a crisis, no one is left who knows how to scale it up. Most of the devs from the 1970s have retired. Make jokes about NodeJS or Rails if you want, but right now NJ and NY could find a ton of Node devs.
Politicians are elected based not skill but marketing. The hardest job for them is to win elections and then they use connections to make money. At least in eastern eu.
If politicians would need to be tested and can be easily fired maybe they can do smth. But in todays system it's nearly impossible.
Question: Sure, we can send you anything you need, you just need to fax us your ID.
Answer: I can not do sofrom where I am now.
Question: Why so? Were are you located?
Answer: 21st century
I get that these are hardware/software issues, but this is the same deferred maintenance gotcha that's plagued public infrastructure generally.
all the fax and COBOL talk today, this throwback comic has come up a few times:<p>In the 24th century... <a href="https://abstrusegoose.com/323" rel="nofollow">https://abstrusegoose.com/323</a>