Let’s set the scene.
You live in California—the land of Teslas, TikTok mansions, and enough VC funding to launch three more Internets. Yet, when you log on to a state government website—say, to renew your driver’s license or pay property taxes—you’re transported not to the future but to a janky time capsule from 2004. Buttons misaligned. Pages that won’t load. Login systems that lock you out for using an apostrophe in your last name.
Why? HOW? Isn’t California supposed to be better than this?
Let’s dig in.
The Irony Is Not Lost On Anyone
California gave birth to Apple, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Adobe, Uber, Salesforce… the list goes on. If the Internet had a womb, it would have been a garage in Palo Alto.
Yet, California’s state websites look like they were designed by someone’s cousin who just discovered HTML. You’d think the proximity to tech titans would mean better digital services. But alas, while Silicon Valley writes the code for the rest of the world, California’s government still struggles to upload PDFs.
Bureaucracy: The Original Lag
The private tech sector moves at lightning speed. Government? Not so much.
California’s government, like most public institutions, is tangled in layers of procurement rules, legacy systems, outdated contracts, and security protocols older than your MySpace profile. By the time a state project is approved, scoped, contracted, built, reviewed, delayed, revised, and launched… a startup would’ve IPO’d and died twice.
Procurement policies often favor the lowest bidder, not the best developer. So you end up with contractors who know just enough to deliver “functional” code—and zero incentive to make it pretty, fast, or user-friendly.
Legacy Systems: Code That Refuses to Die
Many state departments still rely on COBOL. That’s not a typo. That’s a language from the 1950s. Some of the systems running behind the DMV, EDD, or tax portals were built during the Nixon administration and patched ever since.
Replacing these systems isn’t just expensive—it’s risky. One wrong move and the whole thing could collapse like a house of digital cards. So instead of upgrading, agencies just slap new web forms over old mainframes, like putting a smart doorbell on a haunted house.
Funding Goes to Fires, Not Fonts
California has to deal with wildfires, earthquakes, droughts, housing crises, and about 2 million people trying to get concert tickets at the same time.
When the budget pie gets sliced, “revamp the DMV website” doesn’t always beat out “put out literal fires.” IT funding in the public sector often focuses on essential operations and compliance—not user experience. And definitely not aesthetics.
No One Gets Fired for a Bad Website
In Silicon Valley, a terrible app can tank your company and career. In government? You’re more likely to get a pension than a pink slip.
There’s little competition, no Yelp for government services, and limited accountability for digital experiences. If a form times out and you lose all your progress? You sigh, curse softly, and try again tomorrow—not rage-quit your citizenship.
So What Can Be Done?
Actually… a lot. The good news is that awareness is growing, and there are efforts to fix it.
California now has the Office of Digital Innovation, and they’ve already helped improve sites like COVID-19 CA and other essential platforms. Some agencies are using agile methods, hiring product managers from tech companies, and open-sourcing their code.
The hope? That the state starts to look not just near Silicon Valley—but starts to act like it too.
Final Thought
It’s not that California can’t build amazing websites—it’s that the systems in place weren’t designed to make that easy. Until government procurement, culture, and accountability catch up with the talent in the state, we’ll still be using 90s-style dropdowns to navigate 21st-century problems.
So next time your screen freezes on the EDD portal, remember: You’re not alone. Somewhere, a Google engineer is also screaming into the void—while trying to reset their state login for the fourth time.