What's it like working for government?

I preface this with the fact that I've been in government, in particular the Judiciary, only for less than 2 months. I've been putting off writing this because I feel like there's so much to say but I often find myself at the end of the day exhausted. Not because of the work but because of the commute haha... I digress.

If you know me or have read through my CV (hello recruiters!), then I assume you would think it would be odd to see me ending up working in government. I began my career starting a startup, finding my footing in software engineering, then ending up here! Why am I working for a system that is notorious for being slow and bureaucratic when I'm so used to the fast and volatile space of technology-based businesses? I think partly it's because I want to slow down. There's always excitement around technology that I've always love to be a part of, but I think in some ways "breaking things" and "failing fast" have become synonymous to burnout for me. I've been feeling that way for the past few months and haven't found the time to rest.

When the role was offered to me, I thought of how this might be hard to explain for future employers. Perhaps it would look as if I would be changing my mind again on how I want to go about my career. I did start out doing branding and creatives to technical work and finally to now, administrative work. But a month in, I think I was worried about the wrong thing! My feelings and thoughts around working in government shifted into asking questions like "how can I maximize my time here?" and "how can I lend my talents while I'm here?"

I think working in government becomes a bit more interesting once I start asking myself what are the problems that administrative arm of the Judiciary and how I might address it. I saw gaps in personalized communications to other court personnel and responded by creating simple Power Automate automations for email correspondence. I saw documents losing sight towards their destinations and build a custom Sharepoint app for tracking.

I can go on how I've spent more time utilizing Microsoft tools to build internal systems, but I think that's a story for another time. My point is, the environment and the adminstrative bottlenecks have become a source of interest of mine. There are constraints which I'm amused of like how my license is an $8/per month Microsoft license. So the challenge there is, "how can I build with this?" Even with my lowkey obsession with finding the right tech stack or figuring out software architecture, I had to put that aside and work with the system than overhauling it.

That's another thing I realized, most of these system's problem isn't rooted in the lack of technology. Introducing technology into the system helps, yes! But the bulk of improving efficiency in admin work, from what I've observed, is actually change management. It didn't really dawn onto me on how big the Judiciary is. There's so much moving parts, so much humans in the loop and so much bureaucracy that made sense after a while. Given that, our boss told us that non-verbatim that a workflow is just a workflow unless people follow it. Rallying people or convincing them at least that digitizing systems or making them use technology is another task I eventually have to face. It doesn't sound too good on paper when you say that "Thing 1 will automate your work!" but would mean someone losing their routine. I think that's something I'm still learning, the fact that digital systems are supposed to work alongside existing work culture.

I speak about working in the Judiciary with so much optimism because leadership, from what I've observed, has been keen in modernizing the system. I see them building the foundations slowly, and I think while I'm here I want to help out.