… its a website run by the US Government. Why does it have such large downtimes in this day and age?

  • ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com
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    1 year ago

    We have the same for the tax system in Sweden. The reason there is multi part but two big ones are:

    Guarantees around how long time processing your tax information will take. But this gets harder if your information comes in at off hours since the tax information still needs a human stamp of approval (which really is making sure the system didn’t flag it as manual review which happens at random and if there are discrepancies)

    The second, related one, is that they do batch processing at night and while they could queue data for the next day doing so would require a rewrite of the law guaranteeing a certain processing time, since if your data comes in after the start of the batch run it won’t run until the next day, which would be hard to properly inform people about in a way they’ll accept. Better then to simply not accept it then.

    • Vex_Detrause
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      1 year ago

      It’s like saying “This law ensures your application will be processed in 48hrs” then everyone rejoice and vote! But instead of adding more manpower to process they limit the application coming in. Sneaky.

      • ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com
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        1 year ago

        While I get your point I don’t really agree. This law/requirement on the tax agency predates digital tax forms and is the same if you send in on paper. It’s more about how they don’t want to make things more complicated by having different rules for different media. It’s still so much more simple to use the digital forms / system and very few people actually need these systems online during the night and even fewer companies. The benefit is simply far outweighed by the cost. Remember it would be tax payers that have to pay for the system being available 24/7 with everything that entails in increased support costs and infrastructure costs due to the higher SLA levels required from all parties involved.