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Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

karlsnotes.com

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Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#81

Post by spurgu »

ryukafalz wrote: post #27
myroon5 wrote: post #6

Even without changing processes, hundreds of years of time could be saved by reducing the frequency we have to interact with government at all For example, almost 20 American states require license renewal every 4 years or more frequently: https://ballotpedia.org/Driver%27s_license_costs_by_state,_2... When I renew, there's no test (not even vision), and they don't even retake my picture or let me update my height. T…

I'd go the other way; we really should require retesting for driver's license renewals. New Jersey for example just enacted a "safe passing" law earlier this year in an attempt to make bicyclists and pedestrians safer. But existing drivers will never have to demonstrate that they know this because we never retest people after they get their license once.

Couldn't the government (or state) simply run ad campaigns for a couple of weeks informing the public of new changes?

Edit: Most changes are not rocket science, you simply need to be aware of them.

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#82

Post by MonkeyMalarky »

beorno wrote: post #68

Time wasted filling in forms and talking to service staff should really be tracked and associated with the business or government agency, then it's possible to actually assign a "bureaucracy/red-tape tax" based on the hours they waste for people using the service. Without externalizing the cost of all the time wasted, it's just too easy to push time-costs on to the consumers/citizens. It's already a huge problem, and…

Even with the same amount of work or service provided, under-staffing absolutely consumes and destroys peoples productivity. What an awful waste it is to take the morning off work to go somewhere like the DMV, wait forever in line and see half the service counters empty. Sure, the government saved on some staff salary but society lost more in productivity.

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#83

Post by sdfhbdf »

It does sound great when it works. It’s awesome that Estonia succeeded. I do believe this is a really hard problem - digitising public services - to solve at scale.

Whenever you have bigger countries you almost always have several levels of local governance - state, county or Land. These local governments often work with full autonomy and do not share date with the central government.

In this case even solving such simple and basic thing as a centralised login solution is difficult since why would the owner of the centralised login solution should have knowledge of which citizen used which local governments service?

I believe that’s why we see so many unfinished systems not working together because they have to be built completely separately by each local government since they operate in autonomy.

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#84

Post by etage3 »

concordDance wrote: post #29
itake wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

"Man" is an ancient word that means both "human" and "male human" depending on context. The former usage actually predates the latter.

I think itake understands this and was making a point (an important one at that). Douglas R. Hofstadter made the same point (perhaps more eloquently) in "A Person Paper on Purity in Language"[0], which might be another avenue if you wish to understand what the parent comment was pointing at.

[0]https://www.angelfire.com/rebellion/personpaper/

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#85

Post by germanier »

dghughes wrote: post #75

I'm in Canada and all I can think of is how my Mom, uncles, other older relatives do not have a computer. They have no interest in anything on a computer and have never touched one. You could put one in front of them powered on, logged in, web browser open, and they'd have no clue how to operate it to enter info. We had a hurricane here and Mom applied to the Red Cross for disaster relief. She got a PIN for her onlin…

It's a chicken-and-egg situation. Estonia has a much higher than average number of elderly using such online services.

If you for any reason don't want to, you can still visit a government office in person to do your business.

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#86

Post by Invictus0 »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #70
ryukafalz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go the other way; we really should require retesting for driver's license renewals. New Jersey for example just enacted a "safe passing" law earlier this year in an attempt to make bicyclists and pedestrians safer. But existing drivers will never have to demonstrate that they know this because we never retest people after they get their license once.

It's usually an equity issue, or championed as such by equity groups. America is so car dependent that for folks at the margins failing a driving test is the equivalent of losing your job. That's why DL renewals almost rarely require any re-testing and never require demonstrating driving skills.

Nonsense. It's an elderly issue, everyone knows elderly people shouldn't be on the road but no one wants to take their licenses (they vote in droves).

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#87

Post by idiotsecant »

beorno wrote: post #68

Time wasted filling in forms and talking to service staff should really be tracked and associated with the business or government agency, then it's possible to actually assign a "bureaucracy/red-tape tax" based on the hours they waste for people using the service. Without externalizing the cost of all the time wasted, it's just too easy to push time-costs on to the consumers/citizens. It's already a huge problem, and…

A major loss of productivity? I think maybe i've spent an hour at the DMV in the past 10 years. I spend maybe an hour or two each year doing my taxes. I struggle to think of a single other case where my time is consumed with dealing with any kind of bureaucracy. I'm not convinced it's a major problem.

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#89

Post by wiseowise »

rcarr wrote: post #8

Until there's a solar flare and instead it's just cost them 1640 years. Or a catastrophic computer virus. Or any number of black swan disaster scenarios. I'm a tech guy and I do think that this is good news. I just hope that the people in charge of designing these systems have also thought about what happens if these systems catastrophically fail. And that measuring things like '820 years saved' are only really claim…

Oh yeah, because those problems wouldn’t affect low tech platforms at all.

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#90

Post by Tade0 »

0x138d5 wrote: post #76

hiiele? On a serious note, while the eID/digital gov system is great and all it does have some jankiness. The address search system everyone uses has been a PITA for a while and the tax system still keels over for a day or so when the possibility of submitting returns opens. Then we had the case of one dude scraping several hundred thousand ID card pictures [0]. Also the broadband part is so-so. Estonian internet is…

> hiiele?

I live bits that give rare insights into other cultures.

The description of the appropriate reddit page google-translates to "let's meet at the fire".

Is that correct?

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