Comment All too familiar with this at the VA and FHA (Score 2, Insightful) 306
Perhaps the single biggest difference, at least in terms of impact on my job, was the trouble resolution process.
All the banks operated slick websites with functioning trouble-ticket systems, staffed call centers with actual human beings you could talk to about your issues, and generally made an acceptable effort to fix problems.
When you had a technical problem with FHA or VA, what could you do? You could email a generic mailbox with your question and hope for the best. That's it!
Once I managed to track down a real, somewhat technically-aware human being at the VA so I could inquire about a persistent, apparently unaddressed trouble we were having accessing a particular feature of the va.gov site. Her answer? "Yeah, that goes down all the time, just give it a few days and they'll get it fixed." This was accepted as normal there, and probably still is.