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I work in the federal government and the performance of the tech is abysmal. If all of the ridiculously talented developers in SV who are using algorithms to capture our attention via psychological hooks, instead used their talents to improve our government tech infrastructure, the world would be a far better place.

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The problem there is that the government doesn't want to hire those ridiculously talented developers in SV to do that improvement. The government process for procuring software is totally broken and hopelessly inefficient, and when the government does try to do it on its own, they can't hire decent developers because they absolutely refuse to pay industry-scale wages. Somehow they think that the "benefits" of a Federal job are competitive with what industry is paying, but I guess they haven't been watching the news where Federal workers have to constantly worry about getting furloughed due to government shutdowns.

Agreed. It seems that these institutions are unwilling or unable to pay for talent and that they don't have the capacity--in terms of processes and culture--to leverage that talent even if they were able to acquire it.

Here's a relevant comment thread from a post a few weeks ago about Wells Fargo going offline:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19110672

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