E-government in Estonia, all fine and dandy[0]. But there is so incredibly much low hanging fruit to fix on an administrative level, all over the EU... I recen

E-government in Estonia, all fine and dandy[0]. But there is so incredibly much low hanging fruit to fix on an administrative level, all over the EU... I recently completed an advanced level of "Kafka quest": a 40-day fight with the city administration of Leuven, Belgium. The goal? Change the marital status of my Latvian(EU!) girlfriend in the Belgian(EU!) civil registry. From "undetermined" to "single". -"No, we can't accept printouts from an electronic service. It doesn't look like our examples, nothing at all like what we have." -"But it's the only marital status the Latvian civil registry gives out since a few years. Have a look at this explanation on the relevant Latvian government website. In English. With a Dutch translation I made to help you." -"I'll have to ask my boss." -(two weeks, several emails and phone calls later) "OK, we can accept this document. You don't even have to get a court stamp to legalise it. But it needs to be translated. To Dutch. All eleven pages, even if we need only that single word "single". No, google translate for the relevant bits won't do. No, you can't translate it yourself. It has to be done by a certified translator. Here's a list." - Leuven official sends me a list of certified translators. No certified translator for Latvian on it. I find one online, in a city 100km away. - Certified translator translates the 11 page document for us. Gives us a discount because it doesn't need a certified translation. - Make an appointment a week in advance (the fastest possible) with the city government, then back to the Leuven city hall. -"Ah, when we said it the civil registry excerpt was free of legalisation, we meant the original only. The certified translated copy needs to legalised. By the court of the city the translator is attached to." - Back to the translator in the city 100km away, to request legalisation by the local court of her translation of a source document that is free of legalisation. - Wait another two weeks for the stamped document to arrive by snail mail. - Make another appointment with the city services. But fear not, for there is hope! In a few years, so I learned, standardised paper forms will be developed to exchange this kind of information within the EU, hopefully eliminating the need for certified, legalised translations.[1] [0] ...except for the fundamental conceptual insecurity of voting from home of course. [1] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R1191 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELE... for a bit more context.