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I digitalized Berlin's registration form

nicolasbouliane.com

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Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#261

Post by nicbou »

alistairSH wrote: post #260

Do Germans have to repeat the process to update their driver's license or other paperwork upon changing address? Here in the US, we would normally... register the new address with the postal service (online), update the address on our driver's license and car registration (online if same state, in-person if new state), send an email to employer with new address details. So as long as it's a move with a state, it's no…

They put a sticker with your new address on the licence. The address change is not that bad honestly.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#262

Post by nicbou »

xyzzy4747 wrote: post #255

Is there an actual purpose for Germany requiring this other than allowing the Gestapo to track you down?

This is in poor taste.

It's used for a number of reasons, like planning things relative to the number of people living in an area. It also becomes your official address where the government sends all your important mail. It's also how you get registered for church tax.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#263

Post by throw71649 »

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…

Actually the whole government digitalization in Germany isn't as backwards as it seems. In some cases it might be even cutting edge solutions. One positive example is for instance Elster, the tax declarations are paperless since years, saving lots of money for tax consultants.

But "consumer facing" solutions anyway have some unmovable roadblocks which is privacy for the better and the worse. Ultimately there's still quite some suspicion among most people towards full digitalization. And it's not completely without reason. Every time some new piece of consumer-government Infrastructure is added, CCC is finding at least one very serious bug that isn't fixed for a considerable amount of time - or never. (De-Mail, digital Passport - both probably should be core parts of such solutions anyway) Again, there are also positive example like the Corona app where the design was changed after criticism.

That said, I don't think a municipal government has many degrees of freedom for any convenience solution. (So even if anyone is best buddies with an IT shop, it just won't happen)

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#264

Post by avion23 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #244
BucketsMcG wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Even the most technologically progressive regions of Germany still think it's 1997. Elsewhere, it's like the wall never came down. It is in my opinion a little bit more complicated. The central issue is: many ideas for digitization that other countries or private companies do or have done are very privacy-invading. Germany had two surveillance states on its soil in the 20th century (of which one ended only a little…

This form doesn't save data.

It's not about protecting privacy. Germany saves more data than ever and it's openly spying on it's citizens.

I think it's a mixture of inability and indifference in the government

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#265

Post by sib »

usrusr wrote: post #140
mousetree wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favourite, taking a photo of a nice outdoor scene with random people in the background, someone will always run up to you shouting "Datenschutz!"

Harmless, in my experience. The gloves come off when there's not a person in the picture but a car .

Say more?

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#266

Post by sib »

aforty wrote: post #220
based-nerd wrote: post #183

LOL. Big Government in action is exhilarating to watch. I wonder what would be more difficult, getting your owners to adopt your digitization or to abolish the requirement altogether. Its probably racist anyway.

You want people to not register and let the city know that they are residing there?

Sure, why not? As long as the country knows that they are in-country...

If I move to a different place in the US, I don't have to register with the city or state.

(Of course, if I have a driver license, I do have to update that address within some period of time, and, if moving to a different state, I'd have to get a new one.)

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#268

Post by m_fayer »

CalRobert wrote: post #200
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…

That brings to mind the romance of waiting in the immigration queue in Dublin at 4 AM with my wife so we could get registered by the end of the day. https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/20853936/ . Simpler times. Of course, the Irish government did eventually put in place an appointment booking system that was so comically bad bots would take all of the appointments immediately for resale on Facebook marketplace. It…

I did that in Berlin about a decade ago and I think that only stopped happening here around 2018. I have fond memories of thermoses, multiple layers, a long grumpy queue trying to keep itself warm in pitch darkness. And then when the doors open, everyone rushes in to grab one of the few paper appointment tickets. Didn’t manage? Then try again the next day.

And that was actually a much-missed office hours system. If you had to see someone without waiting months, you waited from the middle of the night. Now you’re just screwed.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#269

Post by BrandoElFollito »

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 am not sure why you keep calling France "Germany :)

The two organizations in France who specialize in this are the ministry of health and education.

For health we have incompatible backend systems for a start.

Then there was a large project to digitalize the patient files. Millions of euros flew in, an atrocity was born, nobody used it.

After a few years, a brand new project was recreated, millions flew in and another abomination was born. I asked today at the pharmacy if I can use the digitalized version of my prescription (read: a picture I zm invited to take from within the app) and after a moment of reflection to understand what I was asking for they said absolutely not and that the app is crap, completely useless for health. My MD said the same.

I am waiting for the next project and will try to get it, I have a raspberry pi I do not use.

Education. We have platforms for regions that brings exactly nothing (nobody know what it is for) and in this you have an unrelated application with the actual information from school. It comes from a private company which is comfortably installed in the ministry so they provide the same shitty application every year. The "platform" I mentioned earlier was announced as collaborative and whatnot, yet it crashed on the first day of COVID lockout despite not providing any functionality, but blocking everything else.

Ah, our taxes system traditionally crashes the day before the deadline.

Ah, our gov't decided to digitalize our identity papers. 10 years after other countries in Europe (I saw the Polish system which is great). But wait! You expected that you could actually use this to identify yourself? Hahahahahah... Sorry. It is explitely stated that the app will not be used for identification purposes. So what the fuck is it expected to be used for?

I am angry because despite my utter love for my country, anything related to digitalization is run by complete idiots who have no idea about what a computer is.

I would love to be proven wrong by an application that works so that my patriotism can revive.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#270

Post by ComputerGuru »

croisillon wrote: post #58
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…

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.

So how would street 2, door 14 be correctly written in Vienna?
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