Do government agencies experience cognitive dissonance around "security"?
- Claire Baker
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Government workers: How do you deal with the cognitive dissonance?
I know you live in 2025. Why don't you act like it?
Calls to government agencies aren’t my favorite part of the job, but on the whole, most of the people I speak to (when I manage to reach them) are doing their best to be helpful. It’s more than I can say of a lot of private sector support folks.
But what passes for “security” in these agencies is a cruel joke.
I have some complaints.
1️⃣ Business owners aren’t the ones setting up these accounts.
This does not happen. Even in olden times, John D. Rockefeller wasn’t going down to Ye Olde Capitol Building to file for a tax ID. Outsourced services or low-level employees do this. 99.9999998% of the time.
It is no more realistic for you to expect me to tap Mr. or Ms. Business Owner on the shoulder and hand them the phone than it is for me to demand that you tap the governor on the shoulder and get him/her on the phone.
Do you want us to pay our taxes or not?
2️⃣ We’re not all sitting next to each other all day long waiting for the phone to ring.
Remember in pandemic when you had to work from home? May of us still work like that. In fact, that’s why we're able to hire taxpayers in your state.
So no. I can’t just walk over and get so-and-so on the phone real quick. Even if I could, they might be in a meeting. They might be traveling. They might be busy.
Yes, taxes are important. Which is why we’ve prioritized calling you today.
Yes, I will get the business owner on the phone if need be. But I will need to prove to them that it will be worth their time. I will need to explain the situation to them, give them the numbers and information they'll need for the call, block their calendar, and have a plan to assure them that they won't be sitting on hold for hours. To do that, I will need information from you.
Are you going to help or not?
3️⃣ Phone calls are not more secure than signatures.
49% of the population can pick up the phone and pretend to be John Businessowner. 51% can do the same for Jane Businessowner. A signature is harder to forge. An e-signature is damned near impossible to forge without authorization.
Every single person that I know who works with these kinds of government security requirements regularly impersonates business owners when they get stuck. Not because they want to. Because they'll never get that person on the phone.
If your process encourages identity theft just to get the job done, your process is broken.
4️⃣ I’m not the problem. Your website is the problem.
The reason that I brought you here today is because the smartest people in this company couldn’t figure out your stupid website.
I know you’ve used the internet before. I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember when the whole "worldwide web" looked like this. There’s a reason we spent many human-hours improving user interfaces.
I figured out how to enter my password 4 times, click through 3 menus to find the thing, and still had to sit on hold for 72 minutes to ask you this question. Let’s please not pretend like this makes any goddamned sense.
You know your website sucks. Stop telling me that it’s me. We don’t have to live like this anymore.
5️⃣ I know you’re not stupid. Please don’t treat me like I’m stupid.
C’mon. We’re trying to follow the rules. I will make sure that the right people follow the proper steps if you will only explain them to me.
Can we work together toward a solution or not?
👋 I’m Claire. Founder of Just Let Me Do My Job, a fictional company that cuts the crap to get sh*t done. It’s like Plaid for the useless security theater that happens when government agencies expect important people to do mundane tasks. And it needs to exist.
In the meantime, we can take care of your toughest payroll compliance issues for you. Even if someone needs to get on the phone, we'll make sure it's worth their time.
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