181–190 of 320 posts
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Well, the UK does both. It has both incredible barriers to entry that exclude anyone other than consulting firms whose central skills is dealing with them from participation, and it also has VIP lanes for routing work to your mates.
So why are online gov services still so much better in the uk then in Germany?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the UK does both. It has both incredible barriers to entry that exclude anyone other than consulting firms whose central skills is dealing with them from participation, and it also has VIP lanes for routing work to your mates.
So why are online gov services still so much better in the uk then in Germany?
In terms of implementation, the government employs a small number of competent people directly - the "Government Digital Service" - who accomplish some projects.
Other IT projects are done by organisations like Accenture, CSC, Atos Origin, Fujitsu and BT. They are generally paid more if the project is late or buggy, with predictable results. But they'll often produce something eventually, if enough money is thrown at them.
The "VIP lanes for routing work to your mates" are more for things like buying overpriced PPE during the pandemic.
I wonder what would be more difficult, getting your owners to adopt your digitization or to abolish the requirement altogether.
Its probably racist anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the UK does both. It has both incredible barriers to entry that exclude anyone other than consulting firms whose central skills is dealing with them from participation, and it also has VIP lanes for routing work to your mates.
So why are online gov services still so much better in the uk then in Germany?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
German here. I'll have to dissent on the buddy-business part. That's not how Germany works. It's the opposite, which turns out to be even worse: As a bureaucrat that wants to solve a specific problem, you form a project and are required to make a public submission. Those submissions have to adhere to very formal predefined legal standards (in order to omit corruption) which make them incredibly time-consuming paperwo…
To be fair, this is how most "advanced" economies operate. It's identical in Australia (although there the consulting companies run the sweatshops directly so they can skim more cream off the top). Same in the UK.
I hope this starts a trend of digitizing many aspects of the German bureaucracy, official or otherwise. I've sitting on my hands for the last three months to fill out some paperwork. Additionally, I have to apply for this specific appointment via email a few months in advance and it takes weeks for them to reply and if there's any back and forth, that's a few more weeks. I love Germany, love the bureaucracy too, I ju…
The budget for the digitization ministry was just slashed down to 1%, so I wouldn't get my hopes up. It would make sense for EU member states to collaborate more closely on the systems, since they all need to solve the same problems why not share? The Netherlands does a pretty good job at digitisation (it has gone the other way: it's hard to get someone in meat space to look at you issue if the system didn't provisio…
The other day when I needed this exact form, I realized how much time it was saving me and donated some to show appreciation.
Thanks for your great work @nicbou!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So why are online gov services still so much better in the uk then in Germany?
1) Most of uk.gov is actually designed and built in-house. 2) Germany, as a nation, got to about 1991 and collectively decided "This is nice, let's keep it like this". Even the most technologically progressive regions of Germany still think it's 1997. Elsewhere, it's like the wall never came down.
This 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…
This seems like a very justified reaction and could happen in any sane company in the world. If that company is using excel and VBA, then because this is what they know and where they have experience. Python is a foreign technology, and likely nobody in that company knows how to handle it. Also, the existing solution is battle tested over a long time, it's working, people know how to handle it, it's a well moving gear. Changing it for some unknown gear, from some unknown person, is insane, no good company would do that, this is too much of a risk.
It seems, you just don't understand the bigger picture of legacy systems, and the risks and costs of changes.
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Having worked in some projects related to German bureaucracy: It's not exactly correct from my experience but it's close - is usally works like this: A fixed sum for digitization is allocated and the local government publicly advertises a project. Nobody knows how to write a good tender or the tender is written in such a way that only some specific companies can fullfil the request (I doubt the cousin thing is so com…
Same for Italy... just add more shit
In Germany, you can sometimes write an email but they will ask you to sign a paper where you recognise that email is not a trustworthy medium compared to a random email delivered by the postperson in your mailbox (or not) without a receipt whatsoever. Oh, and fax machine is still a thing in Germany.