Here in the U.S. we have something called the Federal Register. It’s the official journal of the U.S. Government in which are published public notices and other routine publications of the various government agencies. It’s published daily except for holidays and is also available on-line.
None of that would be of much interest to Irreal except for this fact: The agencies that publish in the Federal Register submit their material on floppy disks. It wouldn’t surprise me if some Irreal readers have never used a floppy disk. Certainly, I haven’t seen a new computer with a floppy drive in years.
It gets worse. The agencies must submit the material on paper with original signatures. They can also submit it on floppies and CDs that are delivered each day by courier to the Register’s Office. It’s bad enough that the government is using sneaker net to get information from the agencies to the Federal Register but they can’t even use flash drives or SD cards—it’s not permitted.
The final chapter of this unhappy story is that the agencies can use secure email but many do not because, they say, Public Key Infrastructure software is expensive and they have not yet upgraded to it. I’m pretty sure that every Irreal reader could implement such a system for a dollar ninety five or less. This whole thing with healthcare.gov is beginning to make sense.