Helpful egovernment tools

Some pleasant discoveries in a weekend with lots of electronic and physical housekeeping. Travis County, Texas hadn’t figured out that I’d moved to California, and sent a jury duty notice. They also had a nifty online application that lets you tell them you’ve moved and are no longer eligible. Palo Alto’s traffic citation system doesn’t let you pay fines online, but there’s a reasonably sane automated voice system to pay a traffic ticket with a credit card. They charge a very annoying $12 fee to pay the ticket online, but avoiding an hour-long errand is worth it. I don’t mind paying for decent services with taxes or fees; it’s just that the gov’t is probably saving money when citizens do their own data entry.

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