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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

#181

Post by jeffbee »

Eleison23 wrote: post #177
anotherman554 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not researched this but rather than being a sign of IT dysfunction my guess would be the government contracts out the maintenance of the web site to the private sector and the contract specs happen to be written to say it will be closed on nights and weekends. In theory this makes the contract cheaper than if the government was buying 24/7 support.

It would seem to us that nights and weekends are the most convenient time for citizens to access government services such as this. But the things that are down for maintenance are not our publicly-accessible frontends, they're the backend databases that the administration uses internally as well. So it would seem that all the worker bees in government offices rely on having access to those backend databases during US…

I view a database that needs to go down for maintenance as "IT dysfunction".

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

#182

Post by feet »

pifm_guy wrote: post #133
AyyWS wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a private company contracted to provide a portion of a public service and later got employed by the the government agency. - The contractor had no budget. Our servers were out of date and we were running out of date OSes and software. We were all paid below standard and overworked. - We had a tiny budget at the agency to buy things at the very end of the year. We ran up to date software and OSes, except…

But if the lowest bidder has some kind of penalty to pay if average queueing time goes over 15 minutes or random members of the public rate the service provided below 3/5 stars, then they'll do a much better job.

That doesn't exist because those contracts are awarded to friends of politicians. You don't penalize a friend, do you?

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

#183

Post by Gud »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #82
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.

To play devils advocate - sometimes the system itself is not just broken, it’s completely wrong! Where I’m from(Sweden) I can’t imagine going to the DMV even for just a second. So asking for better staffing at the service counters at the DMV sounds silly to me

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

#184

Post by chefandy »

pasttense01 wrote: post #97
chefandy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much government data is temporal. Many already have strict archiving guidelines that mandate destroying certainly classes of documents after some number of years... many are single-digit. Nobody needs a copy of which city councilman voted to approve new speed bumps on Main St. 20 years ago, or your first 2 rejected applications for permits to remodel your bathroom. Most archivists are pretty aware of the problems…

There 87,576 governments in the U.S. [federal, state, county, city, township, school district, special purpose district] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_the_United... Only a very small percent have an archivist.

Many have policies informed by them. Even the town hall in the little 3k population town I grew up in had pretty standard data retention/destruction processes.

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

#186

Post by idiotsecant »

Xeoncross wrote: post #95
idiotsecant wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's great when it works right? Woe to you people off the golden path.

Isn't that true of every system ever?

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

#187

Post by notch656a »

chongli wrote: post #158
dpkirchner wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then those empty counters and slow service are used as evidence that the government is incompetent and should have its budget reduced further. It's a vicious cycle and I am confident the reduced service is a deliberate attempt to undermine confidence in government. See also: bans on common-sense measures like including sales tax in price tags, making it easier to pay income taxes.

a deliberate attempt to undermine confidence in government Yes. The strategy is known as "starve the beast" [1] and it is pursued with ferocious determination by its proponents. The goal is to create some kind of minimal government libertarian paradise. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

I thought starve the beast was where non-wartime federal spending as a percent of GDP increased multiple times over the past 100 year period. The beast to be starved being the individual citizen and businesses.

Yes you can see, the beast has been horribly starved.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S

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

#188

Post by spaniard89277 »

germandiago wrote: post #129
spaniard89277 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Spain they're trying... but not really succeeding. > 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. Here this is particularly relevant with healthcare. In some regions I get full coverage with my regional card with no questions asked. In oth…

España es un desastre. Yo me he ido. Y va a ser difícil que vuelva. Vaya cómo está el tema... de pena todo.

Podría ser mucho peor, el problema no es lo mal que está, el problema es que en términos generales no mejora.

Hay países en el este de Europa que claramente están progresando, sus estados, su economía, su sociedad.

España cada vez está más dividida, pobre, y su sociedad más tensionada.

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

#190

Post by tablespoon »

Gud wrote: post #183
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To play devils advocate - sometimes the system itself is not just broken, it’s completely wrong! Where I’m from(Sweden) I can’t imagine going to the DMV even for just a second. So asking for better staffing at the service counters at the DMV sounds silly to me

> To play devils advocate - sometimes the system itself is not just broken, it’s completely wrong! Where I’m from(Sweden) I can’t imagine going to the DMV even for just a second. So asking for better staffing at the service counters at the DMV sounds silly to me

Do you not have driving tests in Sweden? Does Sweden allow residents to submit any random picture of their choice for their drivers license?

As an American, the only times I have to go to the DMV are when I have renew my license (every 4-5 year), and that seems mainly to take a (simple) vision test and get my photo taken. They also give tests to new drivers and people moving in from out of state.

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