I digitalized Berlin's registration form • Hacker News Board

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#91

Post by brap » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 10:05 AM UTC

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…

Yet for some reason Europeans feel so strongly against privitization of public services

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#92

Post by seb1204 » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 10:06 AM UTC

Vingdoloras wrote: post #65

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…

Here's what I do when I need to go to a Bürgeramt: For every type of appointment you can make, there should be an official website containing links to each Bürgeramt's calendar page. Bookmark that website, not the individual pages. Find one or a few locations you'd prefer, then open each calendar in a separate browser! Opening multiple in one browser doesn't work, as it remembers your last selection per browser sessi…

You make great use of modern technology and ingenuity. Congratulations, everyone should do the same. Sarcasm end. As a German living abroad I look in horror at the stories I read. Where I live changing the official registered address is a log into the gov services site, change it and two weeks late I get a letter with ned address stickers for my driver's licence. The driver licence on my phone does not need a sticker obviously.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#93

Post by throwaway_no » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 10:06 AM UTC

flurdy wrote: post #67

FearNotDaniel wrote: post #23

> 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…

My sister sent a parcel this week with presents for my daughter's birthday (Happy birthday Ruby!), from Norway to the UK. She filled in all the spoiler customs parts but must have gotten stressed and completely forgot to write our street name and house number. Just my name, post code and country. 3 days later our postie knocked on our door and asked if this parcel was for us! We don't live in a big city but still it…

> I am certain had it been shipped the other way the post office in Norway would have rejected it immediately for not being 100% by-the-book.

The postal office in Norway tries hard to deliver to the correct destination. I've heard of similar stories where they only had a name and a city to go on, and it was delivered at the correct location. During Christmas, they even have a team of dedicated "detectives" who tries their hardest to figure out who the packages should be sent to.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#94

Post by Escapado » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 10:07 AM UTC

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…

For anyone thinking this is satire: It's suprisingly close to the truth. We have Elster for electronically submitting taxes. Apparently the Elster Project started in 1996. And all it is, is a digital version of the manual tax forms. It's entirely stupid. When I file my taxes I still have to leave out 12 random pages (instead of Elster figuring out that I don't need to file them and simply not show them to me). And last time I called the tax office the woman on the phone told me she can't answer a specific question I had because she would need to get my printed out file for that from the cabinet down the hall so I will have to call again later. 27 years. This is where we're at.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#95

Post by jcarrano » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 10:07 AM UTC

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…

The part about typing it again by hand and printing it is very real!

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#96

Post by melx » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 10:09 AM UTC

hk__2 wrote: post #45

melx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP wrote this is based on "navigator.languages" feature in the visitor's browser. So if your preferred language is set to e.g. French, then you shall see France at the top of dropdown.

> So if your preferred language is set to e.g. French, then you shall see France at the top of dropdown. If it’s French from France , yes. This is the second part of the language code: fr_FR is French from France, fr_BE from Belgium, fr_BF from Burkina Faso and so on.

Good point! But what... if it's French Belgian person from France... is this still "French from France", or "French from Belgium" ? The Belgian person lives in France ;-)

Also, you missed other language codes for French: fr_BI, fr_BJ, fr_BL, fr_CA, fr_CD, fr_CF, fr_CG, fr_CH, fr_CI, fr_CM, fr_DJ, fr_DZ, fr_GA, fr_GF, fr_GN, fr_GP, fr_GQ, fr_HT, fr_KM, fr_LU, fr_MA, fr_MC, fr_MF, fr_MG, fr_ML, fr_MQ, fr_MR, fr_MU, fr_NC, fr_NE, fr_PF, fr_PM, fr_RE, fr_RW, fr_SC, fr_SN, fr_SY, fr_TD, fr_TG, fr_TN, fr_VU, fr_WF, fr_YT.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#97

Post by ahoka » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 10:09 AM UTC

flurdy wrote: post #67

FearNotDaniel wrote: post #23

> 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…

My sister sent a parcel this week with presents for my daughter's birthday (Happy birthday Ruby!), from Norway to the UK. She filled in all the spoiler customs parts but must have gotten stressed and completely forgot to write our street name and house number. Just my name, post code and country. 3 days later our postie knocked on our door and asked if this parcel was for us! We don't live in a big city but still it…

I have a theory that if a postman wants to deliver something, then it will be delivered. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#98

Post by fl7305 » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 10:09 AM UTC

"The Bürgeramt also wants to know that you live on the second floor on the right."

Meanwhile in Sweden, the government instituted a nationwide "Dwelling Units Register", where each apartment etc is uniquely numbered.

There is a precise way to number apartments based on the floor number, order of front doors on each floor etc.

Do you live on a steep hill, and have to go down two floors to reach your apartment which has windows facing out the other side of the building? No problem, the numbering system handles that.

https://www.lantmateriet.se/en/real-property/property-inform...

https://www.lantmateriet.se/globalassets/fastigheter/fastigh...

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#99

Post by bakuninsbart » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 10:13 AM UTC

inductive_magic wrote: post #59

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 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 comp…

For Berlin specifically it is important to note the city-state was super broke until around 10 years ago. Many causes for this including mismanagement by the government, but the main cause is the GDR, how Berlin was divided, and how very little industry settled in or around Berlin.

Now this has changed a lot in the last decade or two, but it has been accompanied by avg. yearly net migration of 80k people which is putting a major strain on all public services.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#100

Post by nottheengineer » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 10:14 AM UTC

Goz3rr wrote: post #80

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 Straß…

There are red license plates for this exact case. Car dealerships generally have them to allow for test drives and bureaucracy drives.

If you buy a car (which is currently unregistered) from a private person that doesn't have those, you just did something that the bureaucracy didn't foresee and at that point, the best course of action is to avoid as much of it as possible.

At this point I have no hope that any of this will getter unless the german state collapses completely.