Government email is spam

If you ever send the U.S. federal government an email, be sure to check your spam folder regularly for the reply.  Yahoo assumes your email from the federal government is spam.  I guess that's not the government's fault, but sheesh.

Why is the government so behind the times when it comes to email?  So much time is wasted sending documents and requests back and forth through the mail (and having them always mysteriously disappear if they're not sent in a traceable format), and it's nearly impossible to access information you need in anything approaching a timely fashion. 

In my more cynical moments, I think the government thrives on this inefficiency and even uses it to its advantage.  It's quite easy for all the delays to hurt citizens while the government crunches on, rolling over us without a care in the world.  It certainly has for my little ongoing OWCP drama . . .

Sometimes I wonder how much more efficient our government would be if it joined this new-fangled internet revolution.  I've even imagined what would happen if Google took over communication duties for the government.  What a silly dreamer, I am, imagining a world where I could immediately access my SF-50 and enter three simple pieces of information into my application for another government job.

Of course, I'm ignoring the whole national security issue, here.  I guess I just don't think any bad people care about my pay band from my '02-'03 job.  I figure Google should be able to do at least as well as my banks, which seem to be keeping more important information private, but I'm really ignorant about security issues. 

Sigh.  Dream wildly on, self, about efficiency.  It's never gotten along very well with bureaucracy.  :)