Kevin Fischer

Builder. Aspiring polymath. Productivity wonk.

[Weeknight Review @weeknightreview]

🍷This week in TTB COLA filings:

[Kevin Fischer @iamkevinfischer]

Worth reading the entire body of work.
https://t.co/h6yKsuubEC

[Kevin Fischer @iamkevinfischer]

"Code that nobody understands is tech debt"
- @ValDotTown

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Kevin Fischer @iamkevinfischer]

Hey, @MnDPS_DVS, @MNLegAud and @Tim_Walz, the DMV experience is terrible.

Waiting in line wastes millions of dollars in time and productivity every year. Take license renewals, for example.

Today I spent:
- 30 minutes driving to FedEx to print documents
- 20 minutes driving to the DVS
- 40 minutes waiting for my number

A 5-minute process cost me 90 minutes of my life.

And that’s at the low end of government service experiences lately. My wife spent 4 hours getting a new license a few years ago.

Most annoyingly, DVS services require time off during the standard work week - another cost to our community.

Minnesota has done a great job with vehicle registration renewals (24/7 self-service), but is way behind in licensing.

In 2024, the DVS processed over 3.2 million license-related cases. For an average wage of $23/hr and wait/travel time of 90 minutes, this cost $110 million dollars every year.

How can Minnesota improve the system?

Short term:

1. Adjust strategic planning to use Citizen Time as the new KPI. Treat DVS office visits like McDonald's treats the drive through and aggressively plan everything around the data. Start by measuring it at every service center.

2. Reduce wait times with express check-ins and pre-approved document uploads. Send them to a portal for staff review before the appointment. Doesn't require any statutory change. California already does it this way.

3. Virtual wait lines. Let people check-in to the local office online so they can go about their day until it's their turn. MNIT can use MNDRIVE's APIs to prototype this at a few locations. Ohio's "Get in Line, Online" rolled out in 2022 to great success.

Medium term:

4. Pass HF 1335 into law and immediately plan a mobile driver's license (mDL) pilot program for standard licenses. Study Louisiana's mDL program and partner with a leading MN-based marketing firm for quick adoption and feedback. This opens the door for Minnesotans to show documents once and then renew remotely for the next cycle.

Long term:

5. Seek a TSA mobile-ID waiver so Minnesotans can use their digital license at airports and other places, joining 11 other states that already have this in place.

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The goal for our state is efficient, secure licensing.

Right now, in-person requirements are mainly driven by federal laws:
- REAL ID Act of 2005
- Driver's Privacy Protection Act

But Minnesota hasn't done anything to make it easier for virtual license visits:
- DVS Policy 125-1000 (vision tests)

In response to COVID-19, MN created a temporary waiver to allow renewals for standard licenses and state ID cards without appearing in person when the core information wasn't changing. Over 370,000 renewals were processed in this time - a massive savings for Minnesota citizens.

I'd love to see a permanent version of this for REAL IDs and other documentation where it makes sense. When the visit is nothing more than a checkbox, there's no reason to go over all the paperwork again, especially in person.

The purpose of visiting in-person is to help with fraud prevention, but this isn't necessarily a complete strategy either. Here's what the data shows:

- In 2020, Minnesota had almost 24,000 cases of fraud involved with issued driver's licenses (0.2%)
- The Department of Public Safety didn't follow their own process for driver/vehicle record verification
- REAL ID documents are 36% more likely to be flagged as fraudulent compared to normal IDs

The DVS needs to fight fire with fire: integrate technology into verification workloads as much as possible to combat the growing threat of digital bad guys and nefarious actors.

The idea that being in-person to handle everything is outdated - industries like banking and healthcare have bravely navigated the new world.

A hybrid approach can save a lot of time:

A. Initial verification in person
B. Renewals handled remotely
C. Arrive in-person once every 15 years

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If Minnesota wants to be a source of innovation and an example to the rest of the nation on how to leverage technology to benefit its citizens, licensing is an easy win.

For what it's worth, a leader that successfully brokers improvements here in a meaningful amount of time would easily win votes.

[Kevin Fischer @iamkevinfischer]

We can't abolish progress just because things are changing.

But we don't want content creators to go completely dark or disappear either. Building paywalls to stop bots destroys the top of the funnel.

We only have to align the incentives for content creators (again).

[Kevin Fischer @iamkevinfischer]

Zero-Click search is killing the internet.

Not only are AI companies charging for their product (trained with internet data), they're also starving creators of web traffic.

The apprentice is murdering the master 🧵

[Kevin Fischer @iamkevinfischer]

Cloudflare is proposing a "marketplace where content creators and AI companies, large and small, can come together"

This is a step in the right direction.

[Kevin Fischer @iamkevinfischer]

The quality of viral generated content speaks to the aggregate taste of the culture.

[Kevin Fischer @iamkevinfischer]

Spoken as one of us.

[Kevin Fischer @iamkevinfischer]

Everything is made up. Have fun with it.

[Kevin Fischer @iamkevinfischer]

My experience has been terrible in similar ways.

Beautiful hardware, but terrible software. It’s a dinger of a time trying to make the tv remain responsive and flexible.

Don’t get me started on the home screen’s chaos.

[Quinn Nelson @SnazzyLabs]

One of the coolest things about Samsung’s Frame Pro TV that further enhances the effect that it’s a painting is that when you get the remote and turn the TV on, sometimes it just doesn’t and keeps displaying art. Pretty cool effect!

[Kevin Fischer @iamkevinfischer]

When Cursor acts humble about how long things take.

Definition of under-promise, over-deliver.