This is cool! Note that this problem is fairly specific to Berlin (and probably some other places in Germany). I just moved to Heidelberg, and this city offers registration appointments both via video chat as well as in-person, with slots available next day.
I digitalized Berlin's registration form
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Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form
#52This is a pretty specific problem to solve, but I thought you might have a laugh at our desperately broken bureaucracy on our behalf. I built a digital form filler for a poorly-designed that every Berliner must deal with. I explain what I did to make it clearer and easier to fill.
The German authorities have no incitive to digitize and fix the broken bureaucracy because for one, in their mind there's nothing wrong with it because Germany is Europe's wealthiest country so it can never be wrong, and secondly, digitizing bureaucracy means increased efficiency which means less public servant jobs and they don't want that. What they want is more bureaucracy and more cushy public servant jobs pushin…
As someone that haven’t ever been to Germany or interacted with any German government, but works with different governments a lot, it has really become apparent that Germans love telling the rest of the world how bad their bureaucracy is, then go on to describe something that sounds entirely common. It’s like New Yorkers telling you how good and unique bodegas are, and it turns out they either grew up in New York City or some one-traffic-light town and just haven’t had any worldly exposure.
Your personal anecdote as another commenter pointed out says much more about your lack of consulting and general workplace experience than it does about German bureaucracy. It all sounds very typical and again what I’d expect as someone that can count on one hand the number of people in Germany I’ve talked to professionally.
Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form
#53Bravo! Bürgerämter are most of the time a fucking joke. My registration in Berlin took months after I already moved there, the waiting times are just that long, and this seems to apply to many cities. I live in another city now, and my ID card has been expired for months now (which, legally, is a misdemeanor). There isn't a single free appointment anywhere, citywide. You can attempt to go personally there in the earl…
The trick is to look for appointments early in the morning. People who think they won't be able to make it to the appointment that day cancel theirs and there's a bunch of openings every morning.
Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry, but that's just complete nonsense. > in their mind there's nothing wrong with it because Germany is Europe's wealthiest country so it can never be wrong There's literally not a single political party that doesn't admit that Germany is being too slow here or that doesn't admit that it's embarassing. On a national and on a local level. You can Google that if you don't believe me. > digitizing bureaucracy mea…
>Germany just upgraded too early, then let everything run and stopped upgrading because the current system works Upgraded too early to what? Letters and fax machines?
With the ISDN (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Services_Digital_Ne...) network, Germany had the most advanced digital switching infrastructure in the world. It offered two 64kbit/s lines into every household, and that in the 80s. Unfortunately, due to political decisions that were highly influenced by Leo Kirch and his commercial TV provider (Premiere), Germany's public telecoms infrastructure was a) privaticed into Deutsche Telekom and b) shifted to put copper TV cable into every household instead of fiber.
In east Germany, after reunification in the 1990s, Deutsche Telekom started to introduce a fiber into every home (OPAL - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optische_Anschlussleitung) but then they shifted their focus to DSL and reusing the old copper wires for telephone lines and abandoned this. No, not only abandoned. They opened up the streets again to lay new copper wire.
Now, fiber to the home is back on the table.
Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form
#55[dead]
Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form
#56> Or why not skip paper entirely? If we're talking about actual reform, the obvious suggestion is to skip the entire notion of registration, no?
[deleted]
Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form
#57> Or why not skip paper entirely? If we're talking about actual reform, the obvious suggestion is to skip the entire notion of registration, no?
Yes, as a non-European expat moving to Denmark in 2017, my experience was eye-opening.
I needed one physical visit to the International affairs section of the citizens service(Borger service), where they took my biometrics, and issued me a CPR number(a national Id equivalent I that of social security number in the US, or Aadhaar ID in India), and another set of codes called Nem-Id which serves as a second factor authentication for all things online. That’s it.
I could go online, login with my CPR number, and use the Nem-ID as the second factor auth, and register my address, bank account, immigration details, driving license etc.
Need a bank account? Open one by using the CPR number and second factor auth using Nem-ID.
Same goes for phone connection, internet at home, whatever else.
Need holidays? Paid for by the government, and I login using my CPR number ti check my state of holidays. Independent of my employer.
Childcare benefit? Apply using the CPR number online.
Need to find a daycare(Vuggestue) for your kid? No need, login with the kid’s cpr number and apply, and you get assigned to one of the neighborhood ones.
I move to a different address within Denmark? Change the address in that borgerservice portal, and that’s it. Even my internet provider sends a bill to the new address automatically.
End of the year, I get a tax report from SKAT(tax authorities) because they already know all my details as they are linked with my CPR number. All I need to do is report any corrections. If not my tax reporting is done by default.
When my kid was born in Denmark, the nurse came with a bag with a stork doll, and an envelope with….. CPR number :-)
It was a pleasure how things were digitized in Denmark.
Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form
#58> German apartments don’t have apartment numbers. If your name is not on your mailbox, postal workers can’t deliver your mail. This can also cause delivery failures the other way around - a friend in Germany once sent me a package but didn't bother writing the apartment number on it because she assumed the postman would use my name to find the right box. Instead it got sent right back to Germany. (Austrian bureaucrac…
Even within Austria there are differences: i used to live in Innsbruck with an address written 4-51 (meaning street number 4, door 51) and then moved to Vienna, street number 2, door number 14. But in Vienna 2-14 means the big building with street numbers 2 through 14. My building was not big, you could physically see it is street number 2. Well, i never got that letter.
Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form
#59Bravo! Bürgerämter are most of the time a fucking joke. My registration in Berlin took months after I already moved there, the waiting times are just that long, and this seems to apply to many cities. I live in another city now, and my ID card has been expired for months now (which, legally, is a misdemeanor). There isn't a single free appointment anywhere, citywide. You can attempt to go personally there in the earl…
I mean, from what I hear Berlin does take the cake on this one, but yes: its a country-wide phenomenon.
For what its worth, I was pleasantly surprised by the things you can do digitally in Kiel.
Schleswig-Holstein, Niedersachsen, Hamburg and Bremen have "Dataport", a publicly owned company which does a lot of the tech for public institutions in the area. While they are not operating at the efficiency of a normal company, they seem to be fairly useful. I'm not sure if something similar exists for other regions in Germany.
Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form
#60It shows the absolute inaptitude of our Government if for all the hundreds of millions that they spend on the "digital transformation of the Government" every year, they cannot hire one guy who does exactly what Nicolas did here.