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I digitalized Berlin's registration form

nicolasbouliane.com

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Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#281

Post by nforgerit »

ulnarkressty wrote: post #279
nforgerit wrote: post #102

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…

Germany has quite a lush hacker culture (e.g. CCC), I'm wondering why some people with know-how don't just get together and make a bunch of solutions like the one in this submission.

Because the bureaucrats (mostly suits and legal professionals) being afraid of making compliance mistakes in their projects, they will only hire certified people who went through all the German (mostly) BS university education. So the overall system is optimized for hiring rather subservient people and sorts out potentially talented "troublemakers".

In addition, e.g. CCC is one of those groups with well-educated tech talent but they have kind of a history getting criminalized by the German governments (starting from the 80s). As a result, they (to me) seem to be rather anti-government and focus on very valuable tech workshops and tech education for interested civilians.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#282

Post by johneth »

brap wrote: post #211
nisa wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these shitty online services are already run by private consulting companies that burn your tax money.

You’re right, but this is not what I mean by privatizing. In this scenario you described, the government has a monopoly and you as a citizen don’t get to opt-out or switch to the competition. You will pay for whatever garbage service they provide you with, unless you want to go to jail. There are no consequences to wasting your tax money. These private consulting companies are just the means to waste it.

Government tends to do what only government can do (e.g. issue passports, driving licenses, file taxes, etc.), and things where natural monopolies exist (water supply, trains, roads).

What exactly would you privatise? (read: hand over obscene profits to a rent-seeking private entity).

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#283

Post by josephg »

jlangenauer wrote: post #119
nforgerit wrote: post #102

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.

Australia also has the Digital Transformation Agency[1] to do things in house like the UK does it. I’m not sure how many government IT projects use them though. Some departments also seem to have their own (competent) in house software teams, like the ABS, the DSD (Aussie NSA) and the ATO (aus tax office).

And thank god for that, because there’s also an ungodly number of consultants milking the Australian taxpayers for all we’re worth.

[1] https://www.dta.gov.au/

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#284

Post by golergka »

pzduniak wrote: post #252
cromka wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t speak for others, but Polish engineers aren’t and haven’t been cheaper than German for a while now.

Perhaps you're comparing _good_ engineers. That's not who we're talking about here :) There's tens of thousands of fresh IT graduates working 2.5k EUR/mo jobs (or less) - and you can replace any engineer with a finite amount of these guys.

> There's tens of thousands of fresh IT graduates working 2.5k EUR/mo jobs (or less)

That's a senior developer salary in Portugal (in Farfetch, no less).

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#285

Post by CalRobert »

m_fayer wrote: post #268
CalRobert wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

Really glad I took my business to the Netherlands and not Germany.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#286

Post by radiator »

jona-f wrote: post #257
nicbou wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elster is still among the best digital products Germany has to offer. Pretty much everything else is worse.

Can anyone tell me why it is named after a bird known for stealing? Is this a deliberate joke? How did that get approved?

It is an acronym, ELektronische STeuerERklärung

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#287

Post by golergka »

carlosjobim wrote: post #185
jlangenauer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What frightens me is comparing the snail-like rate of progress in the post-modern era with the rapid progress during the 20th century, regardless of economic and governmental system. It's like the a hand brake was simply engaged. I get it that people in power want to stall things so that they can skim money for their own purposes, but doesn't anybody else get just bored by the lack of progress?

You're looking at already developed countries. If you look at digitisation of government services in Russia or virtual currencies and online banking in Nigeria, they will be much better than their first world counterparts.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#288

Post by CalRobert »

fsniper wrote: post #210
CalRobert wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That appointment system is the worst online registration system ever. In fact I suggest people having trouble to move outside of the Dublin area to avoid it. Then you would only need to call the garda and an immigration officer handles everything. You just visit the station on the appointed date with your documents. I hate phone calls more than anyone, but this experience is far ahead of the appointment system one.

Of course, when I tried to register in Tullamore years later the immigration officer fobbed me off until she tried. Thankfully the one in Athlone eventually took pity on me and let me register there.

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#289

Post by bafe »

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 buddy thing (and most of the other aspects) is the same for Switzerland. Additionally, you need to integrate 26 systems built with different technologies, one for each Canton. And some of them won't even have an API but will upload the data using CSV in a FTP folder

Re: I digitalized Berlin's registration form

#290

Post by fsniper »

CalRobert wrote: post #288
fsniper wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That appointment system is the worst online registration system ever. In fact I suggest people having trouble to move outside of the Dublin area to avoid it. Then you would only need to call the garda and an immigration officer handles everything. You just visit the station on the appointed date with your documents. I hate phone calls more than anyone, but this experience is far ahead of the appointment system one.

Of course, when I tried to register in Tullamore years later the immigration officer fobbed me off until she tried. Thankfully the one in Athlone eventually took pity on me and let me register there.

Oh sorry to hear that. Unfortunately this is also typical Irish experience. No standards across different regions :(
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