Understand how the software works, and how computers work in general. You have to understand the system before you can a) understand how it's slow, and b) how to make it faster. If you can tell us what, specifically, you need to optimize, we can recommend more specific techniques.
I mean, even on a good day, the people who need drugs can't necessarily access them. Can't wait for the system to come back up so I can find out another important medication isn't covered.
Every single American city has this to one degree or another, even if it's just "hey, my brother owns a landscaping business and can mow city hall...". But a Byzantine government structure and a "fuck you, got mine" attitude baked into the national ethos will do that.
I'd rather the litterbugs just not litter in the first place. (Sure, accidents happen, but I've seen ten times more outright antisocial trash dumping than forgetting a candy wrapper by mistake.) People get upset because it is entirely possible to live in a world where you don't have to clean up after people who don't take responsibility for themselves, and I think a lot of people are tired of it.
Unless you're self-hosting on the same computer you're using, a web app is, by definition, software as a service. But then, either you're just... running a program, or your self-hosted application lives somewhere else that still requires power and network connectivity.
I promise, everyone, it is very legal and very cool to just write applications that run without TCP roundtrips. I promise.
Why would you use Docker at all? Just run the application behind a reverse proxy. Docker doesn't get you anything except an extra management headache and an abstraction that happily punches holes in your firewall.