> Do those services suck because of operational problems or were they designed to suck?
For the worst ones (the ones that only a small fraction of people, most of whom are indigent, use), neither. They suck because of misaligned incentives, but the systems were not "designed" to suck; they were designed in response to political pressure from voters, who are mostly ignorant of the misaligned incentives and believe that, if they vote for a system that will "help the poor", for example, that the system that results will actually do that. And since most of them never have to interact with the system directly, they don't realize that in fact it is not doing what they voted for.
For the worst ones (the ones that only a small fraction of people, most of whom are indigent, use), neither. They suck because of misaligned incentives, but the systems were not "designed" to suck; they were designed in response to political pressure from voters, who are mostly ignorant of the misaligned incentives and believe that, if they vote for a system that will "help the poor", for example, that the system that results will actually do that. And since most of them never have to interact with the system directly, they don't realize that in fact it is not doing what they voted for.