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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

#211

Post by tablespoon »

Gud wrote: post #210
tablespoon wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Yes we do! Now that I think about it, the main difference seem to be that in the US, you show up at (appointed?) date and stand in a queue to wait forever while in Sweden we show up at an appointed time.

> Yes we do! Now that I think about it, the main difference seem to be that in the US, you show up at (appointed?) date and stand in a queue to wait forever while in Sweden we show up at an appointed time.

That's not something you can generalize about in the US. Here, driver licensing is a state-level function, it's done >50 different ways. It's not even official done by the "DMV" everywhere, but that's what they call in in California, so that's what they call it on TV. Even in my state it's hard to generalize, since they allow contractors to perform almost all the common functions in their businesses.

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

#212

Post by tablespoon »

piva00 wrote: post #194
tablespoon wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Any time I had to go to Traffikverket (equivalent to the DMV), Skatteverket (tax agency, your IRS) or Polisen (the police, to get passports or national IDs) which are the only 3 agencies that I had ever to interact with to get pictures collected from, I book an appointment online for a time slot; I show up 10-15 min before my scheduled time and wait for the call for my booking; Go in, talk to someone, take pictures/c…

> I show up 10-15 min before my scheduled time and wait for the call for my booking; Go in, talk to someone, take pictures/collect fingerprints and get out.

The last time I personally did license renewal, I waited approximately that long without an appointment, and the place had a line out the door.

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

#213

Post by mendigou »

andix wrote: post #192
skeletal88 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why? Why would having every government department, hospital, doctors/dentists office keep your data separately, probably in some unsecured excel file or whatever? When we have one registry for everything, they can keep it secure by having some proper security guys design and audit it, we can see who has accessed my data and when, etc. If a hospital would keep your health records in their own system th…

Because I don’t want them to connect all the data without my consent. I don’t want single government employees to have access to all my data at once.

That's all good in theory. In practice, it's just a massive time sink for citizens. I know because I'm going through some of it right now for regularizig an inheritance and I've wasted so much time, but having this data separate has brought nothing to my privacy. In fact, given the legacy systems, I'd argue I have less privacy because there are fewer (or no) controls.

On the other hand, when these connected systems are in place it's not like employees can just tap your name and get the data, there is some Auth process with your eID/certificate.

It all boils down to people's trust in the government. In Scandinavian countries that trust is high. In Southern European countries it's very low (and much lower in the US).

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

#214

Post by mendigou »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #99
sdfhbdf wrote: post #83

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 s…

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…

I just returned to Spain and went through this Cl@ve thing only to realize it cannot be used for a lot of "federal" (estatales) services nor for the "state" (comunidad autónoma) services.

In Spain we have so many layers of bureaucracy that it's making me glad I left. Public notaries, the State Registry, and the Cadastre, are some of the most archaic institutions I've had the misfortune of dealing with. They even look at me like I'm an alien when I ask about digitized records (escrituras) or at least an index.

On the other hand in Singapore I paid my taxes and my company taxes in literally less than 5 minutes. In Finland I had an integrated citizen experience. Even in Germany, despite the reputation, things were somewhat integrated between the tax authority and the social security.

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

#216

Post by piva00 »

tablespoon wrote: post #212
piva00 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any time I had to go to Traffikverket (equivalent to the DMV), Skatteverket (tax agency, your IRS) or Polisen (the police, to get passports or national IDs) which are the only 3 agencies that I had ever to interact with to get pictures collected from, I book an appointment online for a time slot; I show up 10-15 min before my scheduled time and wait for the call for my booking; Go in, talk to someone, take pictures/c…

> I show up 10-15 min before my scheduled time and wait for the call for my booking; Go in, talk to someone, take pictures/collect fingerprints and get out. The last time I personally did license renewal, I waited approximately that long without an appointment, and the place had a line out the door.

Having an appointment at least makes you sure you will get it done around that time and schedule your day around it. Showing up without one makes it impossible to plan for the rest of the day if you are unfortunate to go do it on a bad day, no?

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

#217

Post by reportgunner »

itake wrote: post #173
concordDance wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Quoted post unavailable.

Same reason you used "women" and not "other people".

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

#218

Post by Juliate »

skeletal88 wrote: post #172
Juliate wrote: post #18

+1. Careful still, public services are also a matter of human representation, of accessibility, to nurture the relation between (all) the citizens and the state (as it also is in the private sector, between a brand and customers). Moving public services online is great IFF it does not remove at the same time a satisfying option for offline/physical access to the same services, for those that are not able to use the o…

Calm down, there still are physical offices where people can go and do their stuff, nobody is forcing people to use the online services.

I'm very calm thank you :)

I'm just reminding, from a local experience (France), that in general, moving/reducing/replacing (public) services physical presence to online services has to be carefully considered & planned over quite a long period of time, especially regarding accessibility.

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

#219

Post by spaniard89277 »

mendigou wrote: post #214
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…

I just returned to Spain and went through this Cl@ve thing only to realize it cannot be used for a lot of "federal" (estatales) services nor for the "state" (comunidad autónoma) services. In Spain we have so many layers of bureaucracy that it's making me glad I left. Public notaries, the State Registry, and the Cadastre, are some of the most archaic institutions I've had the misfortune of dealing with. They even look…

It depends a lot on whera re you. In Galicia is somewhat doable, for example, although they have their own service calle Chave instead of cl@ve (because why not?).

The Catastro is now digital too, I managed to get a nota simple through their website.

But yeah it's always a lot of friction. There's a clear lack of integration that makes everything difficult.

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

#220

Post by Moldoteck »

skeletal88 wrote: post #180
spicymaki wrote: post #165

Be careful what you wish for. For the US if you automate public services you are going to eliminate Federal, State, and Local bureaucratic jobs as well as the support roles to interface to these services. For example if you automated taxing, you would eliminate IRS employees as well as accountants and software services such as Turbo Tax. In the US we don't have universal healthcare, universal free education, etc. so…

What? You are advocating for inefficient bureacracy because otherwise the time-wasting bureaucrats would be laid off? Is this sarcasm or you are serious with this?

Wait until americans advocate for possibility to fire somebody via mail... Oh wait...
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