Govt's adoption of technology seems to lag society as a whole. What I wonder about is, is the lag a steady 20 years behind for example, or is it that the pace of adoption is just slower, which would imply that the lag (or gap between technological adoption in govt and society as a whole) is getting bigger and bigger.
Is Earth going to be at war with the planet state of Mars, in the great water wars of 2150, and the Earth forces VA department is still processing injury claims on paper?
I have to assume that VA department you're talking about is Dept of Veterans Affairs - and if that's the case, you're in luck! You don't have to wait till 2150 for this to happen.
I know that we no longer process injury claims on paper probably since 2014 or so.
Most of the paperwork filed are shipped, scanned, and processed into digitized forms into a system of record known as Veterans Benefit Management System (VBMS) here at the VA. VA Regional Office staffers can then pull the digital records for further processing.
I supported the VBMS team's effort in migrating to a cloud based environment in 2017/2018 and my team help start the Caseflow/Appeals project, a system used to track appeals cases - which relies on VBMS daily. Caseflow is open source as well.
You see change in a government department only when the old guard retires or gets restructured out. Any new technology has to wait until the proponents of the old technology are gone.
Is Earth going to be at war with the planet state of Mars, in the great water wars of 2150, and the Earth forces VA department is still processing injury claims on paper?