Why can't India's government build a decent website?

>Bureaucrats do not need AI to fall victim to cognitive surrender.

That is true. Organizations have long been surrendering cognitively to outsourcing, consulting, and brand names. They buy systems they do not understand and delegate requirements they cannot verify. Then, rather than reducing existing problems, new ones simply emerge.

It is not so much about bureaucracy as it is about the factionalism that commonly appears in organizations behind these types of websites. In the end, avoidance of responsibility becomes the primary imperative of the program. The core issue is that there needs to be one person who takes responsibility, but no one does, because no one thinks about the planning that oversees the entire UX. Someone must take responsibility for the UX flow, and this is the typical pattern that emerges when no one does.

I have visited very few Indian government sites, but the list does include indianvisaonline.gov.in. Some have been horribly confusing, but some haven't. I did manage to get my Visa, complete with 17ish identical confirmation emails (I've forgotten the exact number). One common theme was that to me they looked old, and information dense.

I'm not against old-looking websites with lots of text. If done well, I think I even prefer it to nice looking modern pages with almost no information on them. We are, after all, having this discussion on HN.

The websites of Japanese mobile providers strike me as similar (I don't have any experience with Japanese government webpages, or probably any other Japanese websites). I found some of those had a similar vibe, which seemed very dated to me, however, I assumed that was a style choice rather than being old. Could be something similar going on for Indian sites. They're just not targeted at my design sensibilities.

As an addition, I thought most of the confusingness about indianvisaonline.gov.in wasn't in the web-design, but in the questions. I've found similar frustrating options on some lovely looking websites, or even paper forms. When forms are for important things, extra effort should be put in to make them as clear and obvious as possible. Perhaps the general rule for our current situation would be that the more important the form, the less intuitive it is. The Indian government isn't alone in this.

Does anyone have hopes AI will make things better for us in this area?

Did you try to apply for a visa? It’s a horribly buggy form

This is so very inaccurate. Sure, not all websites are good, but the main ones are pretty good. For example, the Income tax website is much faster, more responsive, and has a better UI/UX.

Same with digilocker.

TCS hires mediocre people because of cheap labor, which fits their outsourcing business model very well. Indian government tenders usually go to the cheapest bidder, not the most practical one. Because of this, even reputed companies like BCG have had to basically offer work for peanuts to secure government contracts away from the competition.

My banker gave me good advice when it came to Indians - the first price is not the final price. Always be ready to offer a discounted price that looks like a bargain to the Indian buyer. It's alien to me but looking at my parents, I must agree.