"Hello. Welcome to the Automated DMV, Mr. Smith. Your car registration needs to be renewed. Since you're here, and we recognize you, and your car is in the parking lot, and we recognize that, too, renewal will be $122. You have three parking tickets outstanding, so we will add $150 to that. You have one red light violation, and we're sending video of that to your phone if you want to contest it. But since the face and license plate match, we assume you won't, so we're adding $1025. Your total today is $1297."

"Right now, you have $475 in your bank account. We can set up an easy payment plan at $150 per month plus 3% interest per month if you like, with automatic deduction. If that's OK with you, just say "Yes"."

This would be pretty cool actually, if we make some key changes: "we will add" -> "do you want to add them now?" and "you have $$$ in your bank account" -> "how do you want to pay", for example.

Basically, automatically giving options to the users based on access to data they should already have. Detecting the car is not even needed, just scan the driver license at a terminal and get going.

DMV does not need to have direct access to your bank account, but can simply hand off the total to your banking app (say), which in turn can then offer the easy payment plan. Some credit cards already offer this option today.

In general, life can be made quite simple with technology without also having to give up choices or privacy. The hard part is convincing the tech companies/govt IT bureaucracy to go this way :)

There's no world in which a DMV with access to your bank account waits until your registration renewal to charge you with a traffic violation.

IDK. Here in the Czech Republic, public health insurance company (VZP) tends to wait almost to the end of the debt expiration period before hitting you with debt collection including hefty interest.

This is done to maximize the interest...

So I can definitely imagine another autority waiting for years before squeezing you dry.

except where the people responsible for enforcing traffic laws (traffic police) are different from the people responsible for vehicle registration (state government road traffic authority).

I think a realistic example of what you mean would be looking at getting support from Uber. If you want to something from their checklist, it's simple, but if you have something that doesn't fit nicely into their FAQ, it is maddeningly impossible to have a real interaction to get your issue resolved. That is what a simple, automated solution looks like.

You've immediately jumped to the absolute extreme opposite in terms of automation, excluding all of the middle options that would be better than they are today, and the result is... honestly, I'd still prefer your fantasy example to what we have today.

Last time I renewed my drivers license, I had to visit the DPS (Texas separates licensing people and cars, so DPS is for people) three times. In person. During a pandemic. Because of failings on the part of the DPS. This is typical.

We haven't gone that far but a lot of those sort of interactions have moved online in the UK. The obvious one for me is filling a tax return at the end of the year. It's automated for all but the most cmplex of cases.

It's the same here in Denmark. We've also had a lot of failed tax related IT projects through the years though. But when i hear how tax collection is handled in the US, i can tell that we are really lucky with our system.

You do this transparently when you “choose” from a list of preset internet providers or wireless plans.

In any event, Governments are bad examples because they serve more interests than just “customers.” They are not businesses and it is destructive to compare them as such

The IRS could absolutely be simpler though, but then people might not grumble about paying our taxes and who wants that.