Your Phone Works. Your Government Doesn't.
P1.4: How government design quietly shapes who wins and who gives up
Pull out your phone. Look at the apps. How many required you to take a training course before you could use them?
Probably none. Maybe zero.
The ones you use every day—email, messaging, maps, banking, shopping—you just figured out. If an app was too confusing, you deleted it and found a better one. When you couldn’t figure something out, you didn’t think “I must not be smart enough.” You thought “this app is badly designed.”
Maybe occasionally you open something new and get a quick tour—tap here to do this, swipe here for that. Some games introduce complex features incrementally, raising you up as you go. But these are gentle onboarding experiences, not training courses. They meet you where you are and guide you forward.
That’s the training course test. If something requires training before you can use it, that’s a design failure.
This is a question of user experience—UX for short. UX is simply how easy or hard it is for people to use something and accomplish what they want to do. Good UX means you can figure out what to do without instructions. Bad UX means you feel stupid trying—but it’s the design that’s stupid, not you.
Your phone proves this. The apps on it do incredibly complex things:
Google Maps runs sophisticated routing algorithms analyzing real-time traffic, road closures, construction, accidents—but you just tap “directions”
Your banking app navigates complex financial regulations and security protocols—but you can check your balance in two taps
TurboTax manages the insane complexity of the tax code—but you just answer questions in plain English
These systems don’t eliminate complexity. They manage it for you. The sophisticated algorithms still run. The security protocols still execute. The tax code still applies. But you don’t need to understand any of it to use them.
Good design hides complexity from users while managing it in the background.
The complexity doesn’t go away—it’s just been made navigable.
Now think about government. How many forms have you filled out that made no sense? Not just confusing—you fill out the same information over and over, especially across agencies. They don’t talk to each other. You’re re-entering data the government already has. How many times have you tried to find basic information and couldn’t? How often have you given up trying to engage because it’s too overwhelming?
Government fails the training course test spectacularly. But this isn’t inevitable.
We Already Know How to Do This
Here’s what we’ve learned across every other domain:
When users can’t figure out your interface, that’s not a user problem. That’s a design problem.
This insight revolutionized software in the 1980s and 90s. Before graphical interfaces, computers required esoteric commands typed into a terminal. Want to see a list of files? Type “ls -la” or “dir /w”. Want to copy a file? Better memorize the exact syntax. Make a typo? Cryptic error message.
Users needed training courses just to do basic tasks.
The assumption was: “Users need to learn computers.”
Then companies realized this was limiting adoption. The problem wasn’t users—it was design. The principle that emerged: People shouldn’t conform to software. Software should conform to humans.
The proof is in your pocket. Your smartphone is more complex than the computers that guided Apollo to the moon. But a child can use it.
That’s not because kids are smarter than NASA engineers. It’s because designers were forced to make complexity accessible.
They had to. Because you can uninstall bad software. You can switch to competitors. The market demands good design—or you fail.
We navigate sophisticated systems effortlessly every day because designers have no choice but to make them work for us.
Aviation does this. Modern cockpits don’t simplify flight—they make managing complexity safer through good interface design. Critical information is surfaced. Secondary information is available but not overwhelming.
Medicine does this. Medical procedures are complex, but consent forms translate that complexity into language patients can understand. They don’t hide the risks—they explain them clearly.
Even science communication does this. YouTube channels take genuinely complex topics—quantum mechanics, climate science, engineering—and make them accessible without dumbing them down. They find the right metaphors, visuals, and explanations.
The pattern is universal: Good design makes complexity navigable. It puts the right information in the right place at the right time. It hides irrelevant details and surfaces relevant ones.
We know how to do this. We do it successfully every single day in software, in product design, in service delivery.
So why doesn’t government?
You’re a Forced User
Here’s the difference: You can uninstall a bad app. You can’t uninstall government.
You’re a forced user. You don’t get to opt out if the interface is confusing. You don’t get to switch to a competitor if you can’t find information. You can’t just delete it from your home screen when it makes you feel stupid.
Government has no competitive pressure to make things accessible. Bad design doesn’t cause failure—it prevents accountability, creates information asymmetry (those who can navigate complexity have power over those who can’t), protects incumbents (complexity is a moat against competition), and drives learned helplessness (people give up trying).
And sometimes, bad design is deliberate.
When Bad UX Is the Business Model
Some of you may have read our essay “Why You Can’t Understand the Federal Budget,” where my wife—who reads financial statements professionally—asked me to explain the federal budget and I realized I couldn’t because it’s designed to be incomprehensible. [We dive deep into that example there.]
But here’s another one that shows how bad government UX can be actively lobbied for: Tax filing.
The IRS has all your wage data—W-2s, 1099s, everything. They know what you earned. They know what was withheld. They have the numbers.
In many countries (UK, Japan, Estonia), the government sends you a pre-filled return: “Here’s what we think you owe based on the data we have. If it looks right, sign here. If something’s wrong, correct it.”
Takes five minutes for most people.
In the US, you do this instead:
You scavenge for documents the government already has. You enter data they already know. You do math they’ve already done. You pay someone (or pay for software) to help you navigate complexity that doesn’t need to exist. And if you make a mistake matching their secret number, you face penalties.
Now, TurboTax actually does a decent job managing the tax code complexity—the actual law, the deductions, the calculations. That’s real complexity. But TurboTax only exists because the filing process is artificially complex. The government could pre-fill your return. They choose not to.
Why is it this way?
For years, tax preparation companies successfully lobbied to block or delay the IRS from creating a free, simple electronic filing system. The bad UX isn’t accidental—it’s lobbied for, because confusion is profitable.
The deliberately complicated interface protects a multi-billion dollar industry built on making a simple process complex.
In UX design, this is called a “dark pattern”—deliberately confusing design to manipulate users. It’s the “Cancel Subscription” button that forces you to call a phone number designed to make you hang up. A tax code that forces you to pay a middleman to comply with a law you’re required to follow? Textbook dark pattern.
And then government blames you for not understanding it.
This is what happens when you’re a forced user with no alternative.
Private companies can lobby for bad government design because they know you can’t uninstall the government. You can’t switch to a competitor. You have to file taxes—and if the government makes it complicated enough that you need to pay TurboTax to navigate it, well, that’s just good business. For TurboTax.
The pattern: Bad design doesn’t serve citizens. It serves whoever can afford lobbyists to keep it complicated.
If you could uninstall the IRS and install Estonia’s tax authority, you probably would. Most people there can file in minutes by confirming a pre-filled return online—often on their phone.
But you can’t. You’re a forced user.
And forced users with no alternatives can be exploited by bad design indefinitely.
The Burden of Proof Reversal
Here’s another example that shows the pattern in a different context: Veterans’ benefits.
When a soldier is injured in the line of duty, the government is there. They document the injury. They treat the injury. They own the records.
Yet when that veteran applies for disability benefits years later, the UX shifts to “adversarial mode.” The burden of proof is placed on the veteran to dig up decades-old paperwork—paperwork the government lost—to prove an injury the government already knows about.
You submit a claim. It disappears into a black box for months. Eventually you get a letter with legal codes: “Service connection denied under 38 CFR 3.303.” No clear explanation. No guidance on how to fix it. No acknowledgment that they have the original injury documentation somewhere in their own files.
A “government for the people” would say: “We see in our records you were injured in 2005. Here is the support you earned.”
The current design says: “Prove us wrong.”
This isn’t about “handouts.” These are earned benefits. The government documented the injury. The government treated the injury. The government holds the records.
But the interface treats veterans as suspects rather than customers. The design choice shifts the burden onto the person least able to carry it—someone who may be dealing with the very disabilities they’re trying to prove.
This is what forced users experience when government has no competitive pressure to serve them well.
If veterans could switch to a different agency—one that said “we have your injury on file, here’s your support”—they would. But they can’t. They’re forced users.
And forced users can be subjected to hostile design indefinitely.
The Pattern Is Everywhere
Once you start looking for this pattern—forced users trapped in bad interfaces—you see it everywhere.
It’s not just taxes.
Permitting: Want to open a food truck? You need separate permits from the city, the county, the state, the health department, the fire marshal. None of these agencies talk to each other. You physically carry paper forms from Building A to Building B. There’s no progress bar, no central dashboard, no single source of truth. Large corporations have entire compliance departments to handle this friction. For them, the bad UX is an asset—a moat that keeps local competitors out. The complexity doesn’t stop business; it stops small business.
Government services: Try to figure out if you’re eligible for a benefit. You can’t just answer questions and get a clear answer. You navigate multiple websites, read pages of eligibility requirements in bureaucratic jargon, hope you didn’t miss some obscure disqualifying factor. They make you re-enter information they already have.
Accountability: Try to track what your representative actually does. Their voting record exists if you know where to look. But can you easily see votes with explanations, campaign promises vs. actual votes, funding sources, how to contact them, comparison to what constituents want? GovTrack and ProPublica try to provide this. Why isn’t it built-in?
And then there’s ballot design that causes people to vote for the wrong candidate, FOIA requests that go unanswered for years, and on and on and on.
The pattern: Government makes it nearly impossible to find basic information, access services, or hold representatives accountable.
And when you give up trying? You’re told it’s your fault.
“You should be more informed.” “You should understand the complexity.” “Civic literacy crisis.”
But that’s backwards.
In software, when users can’t figure out your interface, that’s a design failure. Not a user failure.
When a well-designed app confuses people, designers don’t say “users should be smarter.” They say “we need to redesign this.”
Government does the opposite. It blames you for its design failures.
Government By the People, For the People
The founding promise was government by the people, for the people.
Not government by policy wonks, for insiders.
Not government by special interests, for donors.
Not government by bureaucrats, for bureaucrats.
Government designed for people. Accountable to people. Serving people.
But you can’t have government for the people when people can’t:
Understand the budget
Access services
Evaluate policy claims
Hold representatives accountable
If the interface is incomprehensible, the founding promise is impossible.
Not in theory. In practice.
Right now, we don’t have government for the people. We have government for whoever can navigate the opacity—special interests, insiders, those who benefit from confusion.
Democracy requires informed consent. But informed consent requires accessible information.
You can’t consent to something you can’t understand.
This Serves Everyone in Power
Think about the incentives.
Politicians benefit from voters who can’t evaluate their claims. If you can’t verify what programs actually cost or what they achieve, debates stay tribal. “My team says it’s good” becomes the only evaluation criterion available.
Bureaucracies benefit from interfaces that prevent oversight. If citizens can’t figure out what agencies do or how they spend money, there’s no accountability for waste or failure.
Special interests benefit from citizens who can’t verify what they’re told. Complexity creates information asymmetry. Those who can afford lobbyists who understand the system have massive advantages over everyone else.
The current bad design serves everyone currently in the system.
That’s why it persists. Not because complexity is inevitable. Not because good design is impossible. But because those in power benefit from confusion more than they’d benefit from clarity.
The Apps on Your Phone Prove It’s Possible
Let’s be clear about what we’re asking for.
We’re not asking government to be less complex. We’re not asking to “dumb down” policy or eliminate trade-offs or hide difficult truths.
We’re asking government to manage complexity FOR citizens instead of dumping it ON citizens.
The way every other system does.
Your banking app doesn’t eliminate financial complexity—it manages it for you. TurboTax doesn’t simplify the tax code—it makes navigating it manageable. Google Maps doesn’t make routing algorithms simple—it hides them behind an interface you can use.
What would good government design look like?
For the budget:
A single dashboard showing revenue and spending
Drill down from high-level (defense, healthcare) to specific programs to individual contracts
Plain language explanations at every level
Comparisons across years
Outcome metrics: “We spent $X on program Y, here’s what we achieved”
For voting:
Plain-language summaries of ballot measures (not written by advocates)
Clear explanations of what proposals do, who they affect, what they cost
Pro and con arguments from credible sources
Independently verified for accuracy
For services:
Answer questions in plain English about your situation
System tells you what you’re eligible for
Links directly to applications
Pre-fills information they already know
Status tracking
Alerts when new programs become available
For accountability:
Your representative’s page shows all votes with explanations
Campaign promises vs. actual votes
Funding sources clearly displayed
How to contact them
Comparison to district preferences
Every piece of this is possible. Estonia does much of it. Singapore does parts of it. Some U.S. states do pieces of it. The private sector does this routinely.
The technology exists. The knowledge exists. We’ve solved harder design problems.
The only missing ingredient is demand.
Stop Accepting It
Here’s the shift that needs to happen:
Stop blaming yourself when you can’t understand government. When you can’t figure out where your tax dollars go, that’s not because you’re not smart enough. When you give up trying to understand a ballot measure, that’s not a personal failing. When you can’t access a service you’re entitled to, that’s not you being unable to navigate bureaucracy.
The confusion isn’t your fault. It’s by design.
The training course test is your measuring stick: Would you tolerate this level of confusion from an app on your phone?
If an app made you feel stupid, you’d delete it. If a website couldn’t answer basic questions, you’d find a competitor. If a service required you to pay a third party to navigate it, you’d call it garbage.
Why do we accept this from government?
Not because it’s inevitable—Estonia proves otherwise with their simple online tax filing.
Not because policy is too complex—TurboTax manages that complexity just fine (for a fee).
Not because we lack the knowledge—we design for humans successfully in every other domain.
Because we haven’t demanded it.
This Isn’t Left vs. Right
Before you think this is about your political tribe, consider:
Conservatives want:
Smaller, more efficient government → Good design reduces administrative burden
Accountability → Can’t have accountability without transparency
Less bureaucracy → Bad design IS bureaucratic bloat in action
Government to work like business → Business would never accept design this bad
Progressives want:
Accessible services → Bad design prevents people from getting help
Inclusive democracy → Confusing interfaces suppress participation
To fight inequality → Bad design disproportionately hurts those with less education, time, and resources
Responsive government → Can’t be responsive if citizens can’t communicate needs
Everyone wants:
To understand where tax money goes
To access services they’re entitled to
To evaluate whether policies work
To hold representatives accountable
To feel capable rather than stupid when engaging with government
Universal statement everyone can agree on:
“People shouldn’t conform to government. Government should conform to people.”
Not as a nice-to-have. Not as a luxury. As a fundamental requirement of democratic governance.
This isn’t about partisan advantage. It’s about functional vs. dysfunctional. Good design vs. bad design.
The current bad design serves politicians and bureaucrats. Good design serves everyone else.
The Courage to Demand Better
The system won’t fix itself. Those in power benefit from bad design too much.
But systems change when enough people demand change.
Not by hoping for better politicians—they face the same incentives.
Not by civic-educating our way out—training courses don’t fix bad software.
Not by accepting that “government is just complex”—complexity can be managed with good design.
By demanding better systems.
You already know what good design looks like. You use it every day. None of it required training courses. None of it made you feel stupid. None of it blamed you when it was confusing.
One principle. One standard:
“People shouldn’t conform to government. Government should conform to people.”
Government by the people, for the people—we were promised it. Bad design ensures we can’t have it.
The training course test is your measuring stick. When government asks you to understand something, access a service, make an informed choice—ask yourself: Would I tolerate this from an app on my phone?
If the answer is no, that’s bad design. And bad design is unacceptable.
We have the knowledge. We have the precedents. We have the technology.
The only question is whether we have the courage to demand government be designed for citizens.
The fact that people can’t engage is a failing of the system, not the people.
Time to redesign the system.
This is the work of The Statecraft Blueprint: diagnosing systemic failures and showing that alternatives are possible. Not by picking winners in policy debates, but by demanding systems where normal people can actually participate in those debates.
Join us in demanding government designed for humans—not the other way around.
Related Reading:
“Why You Can’t Understand the Federal Budget” - Concrete deep-dive into budget opacity
“The Manifesto: Why Your Side Keeps Losing” - The broader framework for structural thinking
“Democracy Shouldn’t Require Heroic Effort” - How bad design drives learned helplessness
Jason, when the Missouri DOR tried in 1999 to offer a pre-filled tax form, Intuit hired a lobbyist to stop us from interfering with their business.
Heck yeah.
This line especially stood out to me. I know that propaganda has a big role in the current civil war-level divisions... but the tribalism is baked in.
"Politicians benefit from voters who can’t evaluate their claims. If you can’t verify what programs actually cost or what they achieve, debates stay tribal. “My team says it’s good” becomes the only evaluation criterion available."