Here's a thread about competent civil service, and the idea that gov't is bad and inefficient. It's about how S Korea handled its public education system amid the pandemic.

School year in S Korea starts in March. They already pushed it back a month, to open schools in April.

But it still seemed too dicey to have all the students coming back to school in April. By late Feb, S Korea's Ministry of Education made the decision: the school year will begin online, and transition offline when the pandemic is under control.

How will the school "open" online? Will they have each teacher and each school district figure it out on their own using commercially available software, like we do in US?

Of course not. In two months, Ministry of Education built an online platform for the whole country.

There was a tiny pilot program that allowed teachers to take attendance, upload lectures, etc. At the time, it was for 2,000 users. From Feb to early April, the Ministry of Education made that platform to be usable for 3m simultaneous users. http://www.ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/View/at_pg.aspx?CNTN_CD=A0002634371

At the same time, to bridge the time between the official March school year and the delayed April opening, the Ministry opened ten new TV channels - one for each grade level from 3rd to 12th - that taught live lessons based on the grade level.

For students who lacked television or online access, the MoE began a rental program handing out wifi access points and up to 330k tablets/laptops. https://www.news1.kr/articles/?3899088

Ministry of Education is as bureaucratic as any government in the world. Its workers are not paid bonus for any of this. But in one month they set up ten live TV stations and in two months they turned an alpha version online platform to among the biggest in the country.

You think the government is slow and inefficient? Maybe your government is, but not all governments are. Maybe if you didn't shit on the ability of the government to deliver fast, excellent service, your government could do the same.