"e government" friend or foe?

Unfortunately over the Summer I endured a serious accident while enjoying a day at the lake. While I thought that cliff jumping was a spontaneous yet safe thing to do was I ever so wrong. My 60ft free fall was the dumbest thing I have ever done! No, I didn't hit a rock and the water was not shallow, as I have been asked a hundred times, my ever so graceful fall caused me to tear my acl and multiple other ligaments in each knee. As I hit the water my knees bent and the harsh blow tore my knees to spaghetti. Now I was a 24 year old girl, working as a server full time to pay for college, and needless to say I was also uninsured. I bet you are thinking this blog is going to be about our public healthcare crisis haha it easily could be, but that would consist of writing a book! No, this blog is about another problem in our ever so evolving local government. Before my accident I never really had much of an encounter with our local government, only the local DMV that we all enjoy so much. Due to my problem with being uninsured I had to turn to the local government for help, not only did I need to find a doctor to do my surgery pro bono, but I also had bills to pay! The doctors and specialist I had dealt with, and friends just said go online and apply for SSI, disability, Tenn Care, food stamps, etc. So that is exactly what I tried to do, needless to say, going on the internet and applying for such help was not as easy as everybody made it seem! The navigational toolbars were useless and each site would send you to another site, that would send you to another, that would give me a phone number that I had to call several time before getting a human on the other end and ultimately was useless. Talk about frustrating and discouraging! So I would make appointments at DHS and Unemployment, wait for hours in a crowded room to be treated like a number, and ultimately got denied for any help because I am a full time female student without children, grrrrr. Anyway after blowing off some steam my point is that our local e government needs some work. The concept is great, some may argue that society is becoming so impersonal, but I think that being able to do certain things over the internet is an awesome idea. My primary concerns are that government websites need to be easily accessible, user friendly and secure. If these issues can be resolved, local citizens can enjoy the convenience of these sites, and spend less time waiting in frustrating places such as the DMV. As the semester goes on I look forward to resolving the e government issue.