Consumer software is graded on the median session. Municipal software is graded on the day the deadline lands, the phones ring, and a clerk has forty tabs open with a resident waiting on the line.
That single fact changes every design decision. Access control gets tighter, not looser. Trails are append only. Interfaces get quieter, because the person using them already has enough noise.
The reward is unglamorous and real. A thing that keeps working while nobody talks about it is the highest compliment this kind of work receives.