It's the government? Why is the government even doing it if the point isn't to maximize accessibility?

Well, the people who worked with you might no longer be able to, since you're in a different area or jurisdiction now, and they can transfer over some of their work but it's a pain and there's still transportation costs, and generally it's the same reason you can't like, hop around from job to job instantly? Because onboarding is a fixed cost?

...Well, yes, if it's the sort of thing that's firmly attached to a particular physical location? But most things don't need to be?

Many... programs are confined to a specific jurisdiction, or vary in organization and structure between jurisdictions?

Yes, but what about the ones that don't?

Well, sometimes these ones won't require an address!

Sometimes.

....look, we have a lot of built up tradition and infrastructure from before the Internet and mobile phones were a thing that we're still in the process of changing.

...How long has it been?

Uhh, the internet was invented in like the 1980s, if she recalls correctly? So like 40 years? But it was developed and used exclusively by the US government for a while. 

And she has no idea when cell phones were invented, but before then people typically had home phones, so phone numbers were a thing, so the government does use these as a method of contact. They just also often want you to have an address. Probably cell phones were invented around the same time.

And like, the internet has been mostly in use by the public for the past... 20 years or so, and really took its modern form, like, 6-7 years ago?

...Summer is maybe rethinking some complaining she's done about how slow Providence sometimes is to adopt new social technologies.

Does the US just not care about agility at all?

Well like, they've definitely adopted email as a means of contact.

They just also mandate the old legacy methods. Just in case. And for the most part they will generally use mail for official documents.

Sure, you want to maintain both options, at least for a while. But like, online messaging is so much more convenient?

It definitely is, and most of her government communications are via email!

I mean that's lovely but it doesn't really make up for there still being barriers to the digital nomad thing. Summer is definitely a fan of her apartment and tries to lean towards participating in online communities that have a substantial Nucleus presence, but she has several friends who just like fly around and couch surf and stuff!