Products · Broad category
Government websites
Raised as a usability problem by 201 people on Hacker News over 19 years (2008–2026), in 176 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
- 1Navigation makes it hard to find thingsUnreviewed
- 1Navigation makes it hard to find thingsUnreviewed
- 2
- 1Navigation makes it hard to find thingsUnreviewed
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
Every issue, all time, most people first
Search is very slow and results take minutes to appearUnreviewed
20082026- Search is very slow and results take minutes to appear2026-04-30
- Search is unreliable and often fails to find files2025-10-06
- Searches take a couple of minutes to return results2024-11-19
Forms are hard to read and fill out accurately, often needing lawyersUnreviewed
20082026- Forms are difficult to read and fill out accurately, often needing lawyers2026-10-01
- Legal form's terms are confusing and esoteric, making status unclear2018-06-15
- Forms are needlessly complex with misleading instructions and hidden gotchas2015-11-10
Site does not display at all without JavaScript enabledUnreviewed
20082026- Site does not display at all without JavaScript enabled2024-03-09
- Pages take several seconds to load and show only an enable-JavaScript banner without JS2022-08-16
- Site shows a blank black page when JavaScript is disabled or fails2018-10-27
Long waits and paper-based systems at government officesUnreviewed
20082026- Spending days on taxes and benefit paperwork because processes are overly complicated2022-12-01
- Government programs are hard to deal with, with friction, paperwork and legalese2020-04-28
- Long waits, paper-based systems and meaningless paperwork at government offices2019-03-04
Paste is disabled and input masked, so users can't verify what they typedUnreviewed
20082026- Paste is disabled and rotating passwords must be re-created every login, forcing workarounds2024-03-08
- Password field is read-only, so users must edit HTML to paste a generated password2022-05-01
- Paste is disabled and input is masked, so users can't verify what they typed2021-05-28
Home page is 1MB and loads very slowly on older browsersUnreviewed
20082026- Site is slow and hard to reliably link to2022-12-28
- Pages fail to load and are extremely slow when accessed from the UK2021-09-01
- Home page is 1MB and loads very slowly on older browsers2013-05-02
Login setup needs remembered codes, no confirmation email, and long delaysUnreviewed
20082026- Login setup requires remembering codes, no confirmation email, weeks-long wait, then 72-hour delay2025-03-13
- Login takes 30 minutes, forcing staff to share passwords and write them down2022-05-20
- Logins locked outside business hours, making the automated system harder than registered mail2016-07-28
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Forms are difficult to read and fill out accurately, often needing lawyers2026-10-01
- Hard to figure out where to complete government tasks online2026-09-30
- Hard to navigate and find things; searching for state-specific info is a mess2026-09-30
- Inch-high text fading in and out across five scrolling pages hard to read2026-09-30
- Completely overwhelming to find anything off the happy path of common services2026-09-30
- Hard to figure out where to complete government tasks2026-09-29
- Chat feature throws 429 errors so it cannot be used2026-09-29
- Government websites are unusable for the people who need them most2026-08-10
- Forms reject postal codes with the space, so users must retype them without it2026-07-14
- Hard to find information or complete forms on government sites, especially for disabled users2026-07-09
- Some government visa sites are horribly confusing; questions are unclear and frustrating2026-06-29
- So slow and unusable that people queue in person for hours instead2026-06-10
- Many government sites lack proper internal search, so content is hard to find2026-06-04
- Bank transfer option asks for bank login via third party and errors out, scaring user off2026-05-20
- Search is very slow and results take minutes to appear2026-04-30
- Some government site rejects email addresses that aren't common domains like gmail.com2026-04-15
- Submit button doesn't work on phone, so the user can't complete the task2026-04-06
- Safety-critical sites have extremely user-hostile design practices2026-03-16
- Replies from the user are blocked even though government emails arrive, and support does not escalate2026-01-25
- Accented names get corrupted or dropped by clerks and systems across countries2025-10-10
- Search is unreliable and often fails to find files2025-10-06
- Multiple numeric user IDs across services, can't tell which is which2025-09-24
- Couldn't easily find the technical description on the site2025-08-29
- Password reset did not work, and the site was slow with timeouts and absurd error messages2025-08-29
- Government websites are hard to use compared with other countries' online services2025-08-21
- Official government eVisa site is poorly designed and hard to navigate2025-08-20
- Government websites are user-hostile, including state DMV sites and internal employee tools2025-08-20
- Users must click the page title to return, and scrolling rules confuse them2025-07-23
- Slow animations on every page load and menu open, and no visible way to close the menu2025-07-23
- Session reports are long, bloated, dual-language PDFs with no search or per-member view2025-06-22
- Hard to find a lawyer for non-competes; calling many lawyers one by one2025-06-21
- Form times out randomly and loses progress in travel and work history sections2025-06-19
- Account silently deactivates every 90 days, forcing a password change on each visit2025-06-13
- Slow, confusing, randomly fails to return results, clears queries on resubmit2025-05-07
- Overlay pops up about 15 seconds after load, repeatedly interrupting the user's task2025-04-25
- Online license replacement needed a phone call and manual agent fix due to a backend glitch2025-04-10
- Login setup requires remembering codes, no confirmation email, weeks-long wait, then 72-hour delay2025-03-13
- Public works is buried under hamburger and nested menus, so people search instead2025-02-22
- Rejects legal name containing ć, forcing in-person visit to resolve2025-02-21
- Inaccessible homebrew CAPTCHA causes very poor usability on the legal acts portal2025-02-10
- Hard to tell which datasets disappeared versus were just renamed2025-02-01
- Floating dialog can't be closed and covers the form being completed2025-02-01
- Account lookup fails when a name is entered with or without a space, like Van names2025-01-13
- Users get lost; icons changed after redesign so tutorials no longer match2024-11-29
- Searches take a couple of minutes to return results2024-11-19
- Forced into broken English pages despite the browser's native-language preference2024-09-15
- Several popups appear at once, covering each other on the page2024-07-09
- Site is poorly organized and hard to navigate, with information badly presented2024-06-09
- Can't find more recent data; replaced simple tables with a hard-to-use explorer2024-05-01
- Inbox shows no messages while claim decisions only arrive by mail, so it's misleading2024-04-10