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I digitalized Berlin's registration form

nicolasbouliane.com

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Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#72

Post by TheHappyOddish »

melx wrote: post #10

Kudos on the nice UX for dropdown with countries. I wish more websites do it. Usually, it's "United States" at the very top, and 194 other countries in a loooooong list.

Even better are the ones where you pick your country and the 'state' dropdown is still US states and 'Other', and you're prompted for a 'zip code'. What does American mail have to do with a zip anyway?

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#73

Post by lasagna_coder »

konschubert wrote: post #60

It 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.

to be fair, many countries' governments have this same issue, and even when they do something the UX feels like something from 2002. The thing is, its complex, often the job pays way below market rate and government jobs often have rigid salary tiers, hiring might not be done like a normal tech co. as you might also have specific public servants to do it, and then you have culture, which might rule out certain people or cultivate attitudes towards work. Beyond that, in developed democracies like Germany, what gets funded long enough to be pushed to production can depend on election cycles and public opinion. Additionally, the big 4 have a big presence in developed countries and they often get these 100 million contracts to do stuff like that and... enough said.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#74

Post by senand »

2716057 wrote: post #70

No, no, it's all wrong. Here's how we digitize our administration in Germany the proper, Germanic way: A fixed sum for digitization is allocated and the local government publicly advertises a project. A bureaucrat higher up the foodchain has a friend/cousin/former colleague who runs an IT service business side gig. Guess who will win the contract. The friend/cousin/former colleague starts building by outsourcing the…

I had to laugh out loud. I want to say that's unrealistic, but alas, it unfortunately is not.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#75

Post by emj »

reacharavindh wrote: post #57
wheybags wrote: post #36

> 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 auth…

It sounds really nice when you say it like this, I've always felt bad about all the hoops you have to go through as a foreigner in the Nordics. I wish I had time to rate countries on different bureaucracy flows like the ones you list; child care, immigrant, bank account, id theft, police report, filing and paying taxes as a employee, handling sales tax. You get so blind to these small inefficiencies.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#76

Post by Cthulhu_ »

2716057 wrote: post #70

No, no, it's all wrong. Here's how we digitize our administration in Germany the proper, Germanic way: A fixed sum for digitization is allocated and the local government publicly advertises a project. A bureaucrat higher up the foodchain has a friend/cousin/former colleague who runs an IT service business side gig. Guess who will win the contract. The friend/cousin/former colleague starts building by outsourcing the…

Except it won't be a raspberry pi, because one of the people will have convinced upper management that the load MAY be excessively high so it needs to be a mainframe grade high available cluster that will need to be requisitioned first.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#77

Post by durnygbur »

matttproud wrote: post #40

Bureaucracy in Germany felt to be equal in magnitude to what I was used to from the United States (which is to say: bad), but the character of the bureaucracy's toil in Germany felt incredibly archaic. I hate to give the author of this tool any despair: if you think managing your Wohnsitzanmeldung is hard, wait until you decide to move away from Germany (to another country) and attempt to sever/cancel your contracts.…

[dead]

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#78

Post by ahf8Aithaex7Nai »

Bissness wrote: post #34

Bravo! 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…

Try registering or deregistering a vehicle in a major German city. That once took me three months, because I simply couldn't get an appointment via the web interface set up especially for that purpose. Since Covid, the process is kind of broken, at least in my city.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#79

Post by lasagna_coder »

kebsup wrote: post #62

In Munich, the legal requirement is to register within two weeks, but the waiting time to schedule an appointment is more than two weeks. Luckily, no-one cares. Some of my Erasmus classmates did not register at all.

I think this is uniform across Germany, and I think the legal requirement might be either be registered or have an appointment to be registered, similar to other legally required appointments, which (from my understanding) causes issues regarding endless-reschedule loopholes.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#80

Post by Goz3rr »

Bissness wrote: post #34

Bravo! 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 ran into something similar as a Dutch person trying to buy a car from Germany. The initial plan was to drive the car back from Germany, but to do this I had to get an export license plate. This can only be done in the municipality where the car was sold, and they told me I was lucky because I could get an appointment quite quick, which was a month and a half from now. I would also have to bring the car to the Straßenverkehrsamt. How I would have gotten the car there was also a mystery to me, as I did not have a license plate and to get a license plate I would have to bring the car there. If I did somehow manage to do that though, I would have to get a physical license plate made and then get temporary insurance. Not a single German insurance company said they could insure the temporary license plate, as I was not already an existing customers of theirs. I ended up just renting a car transporter and bringing it home that way.

The process of getting a license plate once home was actually a breeze. I used the website of the Dutch Vehicle Authority to make an appointment (for the following day at 2pm) and they gave me a temporary license plate. I simply had to write this on a piece of cardboard and put it where the license plate would go. Called the cheapest insurance company to get temporary insurance, which was no problem, and simply drove the car to get it inspected.

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