4 ms·

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 fi

by nicbou 3y ago

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.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
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 pushing pencils on great benefits. If they wintered to fix bureaucracy they would have don it already. In German state and traditional company culture, digitization is seen as a threat, not an asset. I remember a few years agon when my gf at the time was working at a big German industrial automation company and she was struggling a lot with some horribile ineficient work process involving copy and pasting shit to and from Excel and some VB scripts. So being still locked down to a degree and bored out of my mind, I replaced all her Excel madness with some python scripts that streamlined everything. She took that at work and proudly showed it to her boss hoping for some recognition and he said "if you wanna keep your job, don't bring stuff like this at work, we don't need it, there's nothing wrong with the way we currently do things", and then it hit me that current German software innovation culture is completely FUBAR.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > secondly, digitizing bureaucracy means increased efficiency which means less public servant jobs and they don't want that Increased efficiency doesn't have to mean fewer bureaucrats. It can (and usually does) mean that the same number of bureaucrats achieve all-new levels of intrusiveness.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    The German state is already incredibly efficient at coming after you with threatening letters for not submitting the right tax paperwork in time on the 50 Euros earned form your online side-hussle. If only the same efficiency would get ported to everything else that benefits the tax-payer.
    - nicbou 3y ago
      They're so efficient that sometimes they'll come at you even when you did nothing wrong. My tax advisor had his accounts frozen and sued them for damages. The same happened to me because of a clerical error on their end. They freeze your account and it's up to you to figure out why.
  - notpushkin 3y ago
    > It can (and usually does) mean that the same number of bureaucrats achieve all-new levels of intrusiveness. Well, this turned dark pretty fast huh.
    - thaumasiotes 3y ago
      Well, it could also mean that the same number of bureaucrats take longer lunches.
  - nicbou 3y ago
    I'm reading Stasiland right now (strong recommendation), and I shudder to think of what the Stasi could do with today's means. However, in this case, it would mean that machines handle CRUD while humans can tackle the edge cases. Bureaucrat time should not be wasted on typing a printed form back into a computer.
- VanTodi 3y ago
  to be fair, it's way easier now to do your taxes (as a private person). We can do it completely online with no paperwork involved and its actually quite alright. so some innovation is happening, even in the public sector. what happens in the company is another thing. it really depends on the people working there.
- snehk 3y ago
  I'm sorry, but that's just complete nonsense. > in their mind there's nothing wrong with it because Germany is Europe's wealthiest country so it can never be wrong There's literally not a single political party that doesn't admit that Germany is being too slow here or that doesn't admit that it's embarassing. On a national and on a local level. You can Google that if you don't believe me. > digitizing bureaucracy means increased efficiency which means less public servant jobs and they don't want that Also wrong. There's plenty of unfillable public servant jobs in every city. Public servant jobs are not what they were in the 70s. > In German state and traditional company culture, digitization is seen as a threat, not an asset. Also wrong. Germany just upgraded too early, then let everything run and stopped upgrading because the current system works. That's all there is to it. It's also the reason why Romania has faster internet than Germany, for example. > work process involving copy and pasting shit to and from Excel and some VB scripts You're in for a wild ride when you find out what kind of IT infrastructure the world uses. Your whole post is anecdotal and when you try to get to your own interpretation of German culture or why problems exist, you're wrong. Don't get me wrong: Germany's digital infrastructure _is_ horrible. Just not at all for the reasons you mentioned.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >Germany just upgraded too early, then let everything run and stopped upgrading because the current system works Upgraded too early to what? Letters and fax machines?
    - klaustopher 3y ago
      With the ISDN (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Services_Digital_Network#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Services_Digital_Ne...) network, Germany had the most advanced digital switching infrastructure in the world. It offered two 64kbit/s lines into every household, and that in the 80s. Unfortunately, due to political decisions that were highly influenced by Leo Kirch and his commercial TV provider (Premiere), Germany's public telecoms infrastructure was a) privaticed into Deutsche Telekom and b) shifted to put copper TV cable into every household instead of fiber. In east Germany, after reunification in the 1990s, Deutsche Telekom started to introduce a fiber into every home (OPAL - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optische_Anschlussleitung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optische_Anschlussleitung) but then they shifted their focus to DSL and reusing the old copper wires for telephone lines and abandoned this. No, not only abandoned. They opened up the streets again to lay new copper wire. Now, fiber to the home is back on the table.
- raverbashing 3y ago
  The problem is that the "political will" to change (especially in things like this which is municipal) is mostly due to older people who haven't filled an Anmeldung in 30yrs at least and who probably still pay 500EUR for a 3 bed apartment and thinking it's expensive
- fh973 3y ago
  German administration is already understaffed, and this will get much worse due to increasing retirement and additional complex regulations and laws. They only chance is simplifying processes and make them more efficient (which includes "digitization"). But apart from staff, this needs strong leadership and expertise, and is made complex by the federal structure.
- mattmanser 3y ago
  When you're a bit older and have done more consultancy, you'll realize this isn't the case. It's just that most people are quite conservative, the middle manager your gf approached was the wrong person, the manager didn't want the headache of the discussion that happens with their superiors (who wrote it, what happens if it goes wrong, where's it sending the data, how much money does he want, etc.) and also simply don't trust some random like you. If she'd been an external consultant talking to the upper echelons, they'd definitely want this, but not as some random python script. Probably as a nice easy to install Excel plugin. So you were talking to the wrong person. What she should have done is use the script to work less and get accolades for being a fast and efficient worker, and never shown it to her boss. By the way, that's exactly what I did for a g/f myself 4 or 5 years ago, and I specifically warned her not to tell her boss about it as it'd be seen as a problem, not a boon. She loved it, turned a week's worth of work into 1/2 an hour, letting her get on with the bits of the job she actually enjoyed.
- ulfw 3y ago
  None of that is true. They'd love to "digitise" but their problem is that there is ZERO Software culture in Germany. Likely they'd have some shitty accounting or consulting firm with their 24 yr old associate who can do some Java code something for 10 Billion EUR. It'll take 10 years and obviously won't scale or work properly. That's why it still hasn't happened. There is no one who can write a requirements doc with much useful content in it besides "make it digital" either. When they wanted a mobile app to warn of Covid risks nearby they found no one who could write mobile apps besides SAP (not a mobile nor end-user company) and Deutsche Telekom (a Telco, used to be state-owned back in the day). That'll tell you how this will go. https://news.sap.com/2020/06/corona-warn-app-deutsche-telekom-sap/ https://news.sap.com/2020/06/corona-warn-app-deutsche-teleko...
  - virtualritz 3y ago
    I heard through the grapevine of the Berlin tech scene that actually both SAP and Telekom failed to deliver a working COVID Warning app. A small software company in Berlin purportedly ultimately 'fixed' the app for around 3 million EUR but this was kept under wraps (the app ended up costing 220 million taxpayer money by the end of 2022). Not sure if this is true but it sounds like it absolutely could be.
- tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
  As someone that haven’t ever been to Germany or interacted with any German government, but works with different governments a lot, it has really become apparent that Germans love telling the rest of the world how bad their bureaucracy is, then go on to describe something that sounds entirely common. It’s like New Yorkers telling you how good and unique bodegas are, and it turns out they either grew up in New York City or some one-traffic-light town and just haven’t had any worldly exposure. Your personal anecdote as another commenter pointed out says much more about your lack of consulting and general workplace experience than it does about German bureaucracy. It all sounds very typical and again what I’d expect as someone that can count on one hand the number of people in Germany I’ve talked to professionally.
  - fl7305 3y ago
    It might be common, but the German bureaucracy is a lot worse than what Germany's reputation of structure and order would lead foreigners to believe. And while it might be common around the world, Germany is playing in a lower league than for instance the Scandinavian countries. In Germany, you need to make appointments and do things in person. In Sweden, you can change vehicle ownership or register your move to a new address online in minutes.
    - kelnos 3y ago
      It's nice to know that here in the US we're closer to Sweden than Germany. I think in most places the buyer of a vehicle still has to mail in a paper form (though if you buy from a car dealership, they'll take care of it), but at least in California, the seller can do their part of the transaction online (which is mainly to inform the DMV that someone else has the vehicle, so you won't be held responsible if something bad happens involving it). And we don't have to register our moves at all; the government mostly doesn't care if we tell it where we live. Some agencies like the DMV do want to know our address so they can mail us a new driver's license or ID card when the old one expires (but these address changes and license renewals we can do online). The Postal Service will forward our mail to our new address for 3 months if we ask them to, but we don't have to if we don't care. Obviously the government can and will eventually find out where you live if they need and want to, but there's generally no registration requirement.
- nicbou 3y ago
  > 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 This is not true. The head of the Berlin Ausländerbehörde is well aware of the issue and frequently says that we need to digitalize in front of the cameras. According to contacts on the inside, they are operating at full capacity with a personel shortage and have zero slack to stop and fix things. They have every incentive to fix things, not just out of sheer embarrassment, but because more and more people are suing the state for failure to act (Untätigkeit). I wanted to make this lawsuit process as seamless as possible, but it would not help anyone.
- PurpleRamen 3y ago
  > She took that at work and proudly showed it to her boss hoping for some recognition and he said "if you wanna keep your job, don't bring stuff like this at work, we don't need it, there's nothing wrong with the way we currently do things", and then it hit me that current German software innovation culture is completely FUBAR. 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.
  - epups 3y ago
    Your thinking is very common in Germany. It is correct in a primitive sense: change is costly. But it misses an additional layer of thinking, which is that not changing is even more costly sometimes. The problem was not that the company was happily using Excel and VBA, it is that the process was clunky and required expensive humans in the middle. If it could be easily automated in Python, it could also have been easily automated somehow else, and that change was worth exploring. With your logic, Germany has justified maintaining fax machines and printing online forms. Embracing change is an uncomfortable process, but not doing that is even worse.
    - PurpleRamen 3y ago
      > Your thinking is very common in Germany. Like the rest of the world.. I mean, we have companies like Microsoft, who basically live from staying compatible back till the beginning of time. Cooperate-world is strongly focused on stability and the ability to control your turf, everywhere. > But it misses an additional layer of thinking, which is that not changing is even more costly sometimes. Interesting how you completely missed the point. I was not talking about the change, but the way it happened, and the reasoning for it. > it is that the process was clunky and required expensive humans in the middle. Actually, we don't know that. We know nothing about the reasoning for the process, or the details, or the company.. We only know the story of a 3rd party, who stumbled over their own ignorance. > If it could be easily automated in Python, it could also have been easily automated somehow else Yes, unless the company has some inhouse-knowledge of using python, it should have been automated with something else, like VBA, which they already are using. And it should have been done by someone from the company, not some strange from outside. As a long-running company, it's nonsense to use technology for inhouse-task, where you have no expertise at hand. This is just harmful and an additional burden longterm.
lasagna_coder 3y ago
This is highly useful. You could take the idea, generalize it to be reusable for any German form, and make a plan to develop such a thing as open source with funding from: prototypefund.de as their applications close end of the month.
Bayart 3y ago
I've been planning to move to Berlin and your site [1] is a life-saver. [1]: https://allaboutberlin.com https://allaboutberlin.com
- Bissness 3y ago
  Best of luck finding an apartment
  - Bayart 3y ago
    Yeah, I know all about that. I've just seen my ex girlfriend go through the process of finding something nice that isn't excessively overpriced, which was exceedingly grueling, even more so considering that she makes 2.5x what I do. In the end the only decent opportunity was taking an appartement in her current building, skipping the entire selection phase as they already know her (which she knows is unfair). I've already accepted I'll have to overpay short-term rentals for months and bot the shit of out Immoscout to have a chance.
klaustopher 3y ago
The worst thing is that this differs by state. In Hessen the communal IT provider (ekom21) offers the service to fill out the entire form online in a UI that resembles yours, but then you still have to go to the "Meldeamt" to sign it (although you do that digitally on a tablet there) because currently the "schriftform" (means: manually signed) is required. It might be changed in the future to be "textform" (means: must be written down) and then it can happen completely digitally. Unfortunately, from the bigger cities I checked (Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Kassel, Gießen, Marburg, Wiesbaden), none of them used that service, only some smaller districts like Bad Vilbel[1] or Limburg[2] offer the service. [1]: https://onlineantrag.ekom21.de/olav/zuziehen?mbom=6440003 https://onlineantrag.ekom21.de/olav/zuziehen?mbom=6440003 [2]: https://www.limburg.de/redirect.phtml?extlink=1&La=1&url_fid=3252.893.1 https://www.limburg.de/redirect.phtml?extlink=1&La=1&url_fid... "Voranmeldung eines Zuzugs"
- nicbou 3y ago
  In France, they have the postman come to your house and verify your identity. It's such a brillian way to verify things without wasting anyone's time.
toddmorey 3y ago
This is great! Impressed by your work to make arriving in Berlin easier, especially for foreigners.
Angostura 3y ago
Just a quick thank you. I don't live in Germany, so it doesn't affect me. But I'l sure you will make a lot of people's days just a little less miserable - so thank you from then. Nice write-up, too.

by nicbou 3y ago

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

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 pushing pencils on great benefits. If they wintered to fix bureaucracy they would have don it already. In German state and traditional company culture, digitization is seen as a threat, not an asset. I remember a few years agon when my gf at the time was working at a big German industrial automation company and she was struggling a lot with some horribile ineficient work process involving copy and pasting shit to and from Excel and some VB scripts. So being still locked down to a degree and bored out of my mind, I replaced all her Excel madness with some python scripts that streamlined everything. She took that at work and proudly showed it to her boss hoping for some recognition and he said "if you wanna keep your job, don't bring stuff like this at work, we don't need it, there's nothing wrong with the way we currently do things", and then it hit me that current German software innovation culture is completely FUBAR.

thaumasiotes 3y ago
> secondly, digitizing bureaucracy means increased efficiency which means less public servant jobs and they don't want that Increased efficiency doesn't have to mean fewer bureaucrats. It can (and usually does) mean that the same number of bureaucrats achieve all-new levels of intrusiveness.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  The German state is already incredibly efficient at coming after you with threatening letters for not submitting the right tax paperwork in time on the 50 Euros earned form your online side-hussle. If only the same efficiency would get ported to everything else that benefits the tax-payer.
  - nicbou 3y ago
    They're so efficient that sometimes they'll come at you even when you did nothing wrong. My tax advisor had his accounts frozen and sued them for damages. The same happened to me because of a clerical error on their end. They freeze your account and it's up to you to figure out why.
- notpushkin 3y ago
  > It can (and usually does) mean that the same number of bureaucrats achieve all-new levels of intrusiveness. Well, this turned dark pretty fast huh.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    Well, it could also mean that the same number of bureaucrats take longer lunches.
- nicbou 3y ago
  I'm reading Stasiland right now (strong recommendation), and I shudder to think of what the Stasi could do with today's means. However, in this case, it would mean that machines handle CRUD while humans can tackle the edge cases. Bureaucrat time should not be wasted on typing a printed form back into a computer.
VanTodi 3y ago
to be fair, it's way easier now to do your taxes (as a private person). We can do it completely online with no paperwork involved and its actually quite alright. so some innovation is happening, even in the public sector. what happens in the company is another thing. it really depends on the people working there.
snehk 3y ago
I'm sorry, but that's just complete nonsense. > in their mind there's nothing wrong with it because Germany is Europe's wealthiest country so it can never be wrong There's literally not a single political party that doesn't admit that Germany is being too slow here or that doesn't admit that it's embarassing. On a national and on a local level. You can Google that if you don't believe me. > digitizing bureaucracy means increased efficiency which means less public servant jobs and they don't want that Also wrong. There's plenty of unfillable public servant jobs in every city. Public servant jobs are not what they were in the 70s. > In German state and traditional company culture, digitization is seen as a threat, not an asset. Also wrong. Germany just upgraded too early, then let everything run and stopped upgrading because the current system works. That's all there is to it. It's also the reason why Romania has faster internet than Germany, for example. > work process involving copy and pasting shit to and from Excel and some VB scripts You're in for a wild ride when you find out what kind of IT infrastructure the world uses. Your whole post is anecdotal and when you try to get to your own interpretation of German culture or why problems exist, you're wrong. Don't get me wrong: Germany's digital infrastructure _is_ horrible. Just not at all for the reasons you mentioned.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Germany just upgraded too early, then let everything run and stopped upgrading because the current system works Upgraded too early to what? Letters and fax machines?
  - klaustopher 3y ago
    With the ISDN (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Services_Digital_Network#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Services_Digital_Ne...) network, Germany had the most advanced digital switching infrastructure in the world. It offered two 64kbit/s lines into every household, and that in the 80s. Unfortunately, due to political decisions that were highly influenced by Leo Kirch and his commercial TV provider (Premiere), Germany's public telecoms infrastructure was a) privaticed into Deutsche Telekom and b) shifted to put copper TV cable into every household instead of fiber. In east Germany, after reunification in the 1990s, Deutsche Telekom started to introduce a fiber into every home (OPAL - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optische_Anschlussleitung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optische_Anschlussleitung) but then they shifted their focus to DSL and reusing the old copper wires for telephone lines and abandoned this. No, not only abandoned. They opened up the streets again to lay new copper wire. Now, fiber to the home is back on the table.
raverbashing 3y ago
The problem is that the "political will" to change (especially in things like this which is municipal) is mostly due to older people who haven't filled an Anmeldung in 30yrs at least and who probably still pay 500EUR for a 3 bed apartment and thinking it's expensive
fh973 3y ago
German administration is already understaffed, and this will get much worse due to increasing retirement and additional complex regulations and laws. They only chance is simplifying processes and make them more efficient (which includes "digitization"). But apart from staff, this needs strong leadership and expertise, and is made complex by the federal structure.
mattmanser 3y ago
When you're a bit older and have done more consultancy, you'll realize this isn't the case. It's just that most people are quite conservative, the middle manager your gf approached was the wrong person, the manager didn't want the headache of the discussion that happens with their superiors (who wrote it, what happens if it goes wrong, where's it sending the data, how much money does he want, etc.) and also simply don't trust some random like you. If she'd been an external consultant talking to the upper echelons, they'd definitely want this, but not as some random python script. Probably as a nice easy to install Excel plugin. So you were talking to the wrong person. What she should have done is use the script to work less and get accolades for being a fast and efficient worker, and never shown it to her boss. By the way, that's exactly what I did for a g/f myself 4 or 5 years ago, and I specifically warned her not to tell her boss about it as it'd be seen as a problem, not a boon. She loved it, turned a week's worth of work into 1/2 an hour, letting her get on with the bits of the job she actually enjoyed.
ulfw 3y ago
None of that is true. They'd love to "digitise" but their problem is that there is ZERO Software culture in Germany. Likely they'd have some shitty accounting or consulting firm with their 24 yr old associate who can do some Java code something for 10 Billion EUR. It'll take 10 years and obviously won't scale or work properly. That's why it still hasn't happened. There is no one who can write a requirements doc with much useful content in it besides "make it digital" either. When they wanted a mobile app to warn of Covid risks nearby they found no one who could write mobile apps besides SAP (not a mobile nor end-user company) and Deutsche Telekom (a Telco, used to be state-owned back in the day). That'll tell you how this will go. https://news.sap.com/2020/06/corona-warn-app-deutsche-telekom-sap/ https://news.sap.com/2020/06/corona-warn-app-deutsche-teleko...
- virtualritz 3y ago
  I heard through the grapevine of the Berlin tech scene that actually both SAP and Telekom failed to deliver a working COVID Warning app. A small software company in Berlin purportedly ultimately 'fixed' the app for around 3 million EUR but this was kept under wraps (the app ended up costing 220 million taxpayer money by the end of 2022). Not sure if this is true but it sounds like it absolutely could be.
tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
As someone that haven’t ever been to Germany or interacted with any German government, but works with different governments a lot, it has really become apparent that Germans love telling the rest of the world how bad their bureaucracy is, then go on to describe something that sounds entirely common. It’s like New Yorkers telling you how good and unique bodegas are, and it turns out they either grew up in New York City or some one-traffic-light town and just haven’t had any worldly exposure. Your personal anecdote as another commenter pointed out says much more about your lack of consulting and general workplace experience than it does about German bureaucracy. It all sounds very typical and again what I’d expect as someone that can count on one hand the number of people in Germany I’ve talked to professionally.
- fl7305 3y ago
  It might be common, but the German bureaucracy is a lot worse than what Germany's reputation of structure and order would lead foreigners to believe. And while it might be common around the world, Germany is playing in a lower league than for instance the Scandinavian countries. In Germany, you need to make appointments and do things in person. In Sweden, you can change vehicle ownership or register your move to a new address online in minutes.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    It's nice to know that here in the US we're closer to Sweden than Germany. I think in most places the buyer of a vehicle still has to mail in a paper form (though if you buy from a car dealership, they'll take care of it), but at least in California, the seller can do their part of the transaction online (which is mainly to inform the DMV that someone else has the vehicle, so you won't be held responsible if something bad happens involving it). And we don't have to register our moves at all; the government mostly doesn't care if we tell it where we live. Some agencies like the DMV do want to know our address so they can mail us a new driver's license or ID card when the old one expires (but these address changes and license renewals we can do online). The Postal Service will forward our mail to our new address for 3 months if we ask them to, but we don't have to if we don't care. Obviously the government can and will eventually find out where you live if they need and want to, but there's generally no registration requirement.
nicbou 3y ago
> 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 This is not true. The head of the Berlin Ausländerbehörde is well aware of the issue and frequently says that we need to digitalize in front of the cameras. According to contacts on the inside, they are operating at full capacity with a personel shortage and have zero slack to stop and fix things. They have every incentive to fix things, not just out of sheer embarrassment, but because more and more people are suing the state for failure to act (Untätigkeit). I wanted to make this lawsuit process as seamless as possible, but it would not help anyone.
PurpleRamen 3y ago
> She took that at work and proudly showed it to her boss hoping for some recognition and he said "if you wanna keep your job, don't bring stuff like this at work, we don't need it, there's nothing wrong with the way we currently do things", and then it hit me that current German software innovation culture is completely FUBAR. 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.
- epups 3y ago
  Your thinking is very common in Germany. It is correct in a primitive sense: change is costly. But it misses an additional layer of thinking, which is that not changing is even more costly sometimes. The problem was not that the company was happily using Excel and VBA, it is that the process was clunky and required expensive humans in the middle. If it could be easily automated in Python, it could also have been easily automated somehow else, and that change was worth exploring. With your logic, Germany has justified maintaining fax machines and printing online forms. Embracing change is an uncomfortable process, but not doing that is even worse.
  - PurpleRamen 3y ago
    > Your thinking is very common in Germany. Like the rest of the world.. I mean, we have companies like Microsoft, who basically live from staying compatible back till the beginning of time. Cooperate-world is strongly focused on stability and the ability to control your turf, everywhere. > But it misses an additional layer of thinking, which is that not changing is even more costly sometimes. Interesting how you completely missed the point. I was not talking about the change, but the way it happened, and the reasoning for it. > it is that the process was clunky and required expensive humans in the middle. Actually, we don't know that. We know nothing about the reasoning for the process, or the details, or the company.. We only know the story of a 3rd party, who stumbled over their own ignorance. > If it could be easily automated in Python, it could also have been easily automated somehow else Yes, unless the company has some inhouse-knowledge of using python, it should have been automated with something else, like VBA, which they already are using. And it should have been done by someone from the company, not some strange from outside. As a long-running company, it's nonsense to use technology for inhouse-task, where you have no expertise at hand. This is just harmful and an additional burden longterm.

lasagna_coder 3y ago

This is highly useful. You could take the idea, generalize it to be reusable for any German form, and make a plan to develop such a thing as open source with funding from: prototypefund.de as their applications close end of the month.

Bayart 3y ago

I've been planning to move to Berlin and your site [1] is a life-saver. [1]: https://allaboutberlin.com https://allaboutberlin.com

Bissness 3y ago
Best of luck finding an apartment
- Bayart 3y ago
  Yeah, I know all about that. I've just seen my ex girlfriend go through the process of finding something nice that isn't excessively overpriced, which was exceedingly grueling, even more so considering that she makes 2.5x what I do. In the end the only decent opportunity was taking an appartement in her current building, skipping the entire selection phase as they already know her (which she knows is unfair). I've already accepted I'll have to overpay short-term rentals for months and bot the shit of out Immoscout to have a chance.

klaustopher 3y ago

The worst thing is that this differs by state. In Hessen the communal IT provider (ekom21) offers the service to fill out the entire form online in a UI that resembles yours, but then you still have to go to the "Meldeamt" to sign it (although you do that digitally on a tablet there) because currently the "schriftform" (means: manually signed) is required. It might be changed in the future to be "textform" (means: must be written down) and then it can happen completely digitally. Unfortunately, from the bigger cities I checked (Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Kassel, Gießen, Marburg, Wiesbaden), none of them used that service, only some smaller districts like Bad Vilbel[1] or Limburg[2] offer the service. [1]: https://onlineantrag.ekom21.de/olav/zuziehen?mbom=6440003 https://onlineantrag.ekom21.de/olav/zuziehen?mbom=6440003 [2]: https://www.limburg.de/redirect.phtml?extlink=1&La=1&url_fid=3252.893.1 https://www.limburg.de/redirect.phtml?extlink=1&La=1&url_fid... "Voranmeldung eines Zuzugs"

nicbou 3y ago
In France, they have the postman come to your house and verify your identity. It's such a brillian way to verify things without wasting anyone's time.

toddmorey 3y ago

This is great! Impressed by your work to make arriving in Berlin easier, especially for foreigners.

Angostura 3y ago

Just a quick thank you. I don't live in Germany, so it doesn't affect me. But I'l sure you will make a lot of people's days just a little less miserable - so thank you from then. Nice write-up, too.