Why do government services force you to call them or write a letter?

Question

I have caused so many problems for myself simply because I&rsquo;m anxious about phone calls and procrastinate calling government services for a year or more at a time.Why do they insist we call them, often to wait on hold for an hour and not even get through to a human?Surely it would be better for everyone if we could use a modern ticketing system for asynchronous communication.I&rsquo;ve found this problem consistently in both the US and the UK.

Nextgrid · Accepted Answer

Look into online snail mail services - you can write mail on a web UI and they'll print and post it for you. This is a good solution to deal with bureaucracy with less effort while maintaining a proper paper trail.
You can even couple it with an LLM to parse & write the bullshit on your behalf.
A good UK one is https://www.pc2paper.co.uk/.

082349872349872 · Answer

Here in continental Europe I've found email effective at all levels, from national down to my village.