[martneumann]

Just because many privately owned apps are bad, does not mean the concept of apps is bad. If the government in theory can offer a "secure" open source channel for me to do my business with them without having to go there or pay for postage, why not use it?

And why do we still believe that paper docs are secure? Someone needs to look at them and can just as easily "lose" them, too.

[everdrive]

The problem here is the smartphone ecosystem. If there were merely an "app standard" which I could run even if I did not have a Google or Apple device, that would be fine. But, requiring that I give at least some information to Apple, or even more information to Google in order to use a government service is what I take issue with.

The bigger problem is that this issue is almost entirely artificial. Most apps are merely glorified web pages. Functionally, they could (in most cases) just be websites and function exactly as well.