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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 w

by 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.
  - klaustopher 3y ago
    If you understand German and are interested in the history, I highly recommend https://cre.fm/cre191-internet-im-festnetz https://cre.fm/cre191-internet-im-festnetz
shafyy 3y ago
Completely agree with you. I think it's just a problem of incentives for the people who make this decisions and work at these positions. "Verbeamtung" (tenure) also doesn't help.
thunfisch 3y ago
One of the biggest reasons why digitization in Germany is so slow moving is that every municipality can (and does) decide on how to digitize individually. There is no mandate for the upper levels of government to dictate which solutions are being used on a local level. Combine that with need for tendering on every single solution and you've got a big mess of small companies underbidding bigger companies that could unify the software landscape and instead build a cheaper, small solution that has zero interoperability with the neighboring municipality. The need for fax et.al. is not because people don't know how to use computers, but because there's thousands of applications fulfilling the same exact job, but are incapable of talking to each other. Paper is currently the only compatibility layer that works everywhere. There are ongoing efforts to provide a common data exchange format (technical working group) as well as redesigning how the software for government is being build (tendering processes, public money - public code movement, et. al.) German government is currently incapable of doing its job in a way that is legally required, missing deadlines and not providing citizens with the services that they are entitled to because they are unable to manage the workload due to the paperbound processes. There is zero fear of humans being replaced by machines. It's rather that more and more humans are leaving government due to burnout.
- konschubert 3y ago
  Building a form like Nicolas did can totally happen on the municipal level. This is two weeks of work for a good developer. Totally affordable.
  - nottheengineer 3y ago
    But two weeks of dev time for every municipality adds up quickly. The issue is that germany is deeply federated, different decisions are made at different levels. This could translate well into software by having the higher levels create interop standards and reference implementations that allow for plugins while the lower levels use the reference implementations (with plugin extensions for the myriad of special of special cases) or just implement their own according to the standard. But unfortunately it doesn't translate because the german state either picks the cheapest contractor (which almost always leads to blown budgets and delays) or they pick by nepotism. They are also dead set on waterfall projects and don't seem to realize that if they keep blowing budgets anyways, that might not be the best strategy.
kioleanu 3y ago
Romania has better and cheaper internet because of the wild Wild West when everybody and every firm were allowed to pull cables anywhere they pleased. People would buy a 100-200mbit b2b connection for 40 euros and would split it between 15-20 people for 3-5 euro each. It was deregulated for so much time that when the regulations finally came everybody was already connected to fast and cheap internet and they were so used to it that whichever company tried to increase the price and lower the speed would see really shitty returns. That’s why Digi exploded and Telekom (Romtelecom) needed years to take off. The Greek CEO of Romtelecom would hold meetings in 2008 with upper management where he would dictate loudly that Romanians only want stable internet with great customer care and that’s the direction he is leading the company. That proved not to actually be the case and he unceremoniously left the company afterwards. Source: I lived all this and was close with the domain
tormeh 3y ago
>There's literally not a single political party We're talking about people, not parties, and I've definitely met people who have this view. To them, the German way is the proper way, and any way that's easier must be cheating or skipping something. Of course they want digitalization, but they want a German digitalization. A good and proper German one, and not a flimsy foreign one. Of course this is nationalistic cope, but it's pretty common.

by snehk 3y ago

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.
- klaustopher 3y ago
  If you understand German and are interested in the history, I highly recommend https://cre.fm/cre191-internet-im-festnetz https://cre.fm/cre191-internet-im-festnetz

shafyy 3y ago

Completely agree with you. I think it's just a problem of incentives for the people who make this decisions and work at these positions. "Verbeamtung" (tenure) also doesn't help.

thunfisch 3y ago

One of the biggest reasons why digitization in Germany is so slow moving is that every municipality can (and does) decide on how to digitize individually. There is no mandate for the upper levels of government to dictate which solutions are being used on a local level. Combine that with need for tendering on every single solution and you've got a big mess of small companies underbidding bigger companies that could unify the software landscape and instead build a cheaper, small solution that has zero interoperability with the neighboring municipality. The need for fax et.al. is not because people don't know how to use computers, but because there's thousands of applications fulfilling the same exact job, but are incapable of talking to each other. Paper is currently the only compatibility layer that works everywhere. There are ongoing efforts to provide a common data exchange format (technical working group) as well as redesigning how the software for government is being build (tendering processes, public money - public code movement, et. al.) German government is currently incapable of doing its job in a way that is legally required, missing deadlines and not providing citizens with the services that they are entitled to because they are unable to manage the workload due to the paperbound processes. There is zero fear of humans being replaced by machines. It's rather that more and more humans are leaving government due to burnout.

konschubert 3y ago
Building a form like Nicolas did can totally happen on the municipal level. This is two weeks of work for a good developer. Totally affordable.
- nottheengineer 3y ago
  But two weeks of dev time for every municipality adds up quickly. The issue is that germany is deeply federated, different decisions are made at different levels. This could translate well into software by having the higher levels create interop standards and reference implementations that allow for plugins while the lower levels use the reference implementations (with plugin extensions for the myriad of special of special cases) or just implement their own according to the standard. But unfortunately it doesn't translate because the german state either picks the cheapest contractor (which almost always leads to blown budgets and delays) or they pick by nepotism. They are also dead set on waterfall projects and don't seem to realize that if they keep blowing budgets anyways, that might not be the best strategy.

kioleanu 3y ago

Romania has better and cheaper internet because of the wild Wild West when everybody and every firm were allowed to pull cables anywhere they pleased. People would buy a 100-200mbit b2b connection for 40 euros and would split it between 15-20 people for 3-5 euro each. It was deregulated for so much time that when the regulations finally came everybody was already connected to fast and cheap internet and they were so used to it that whichever company tried to increase the price and lower the speed would see really shitty returns. That’s why Digi exploded and Telekom (Romtelecom) needed years to take off. The Greek CEO of Romtelecom would hold meetings in 2008 with upper management where he would dictate loudly that Romanians only want stable internet with great customer care and that’s the direction he is leading the company. That proved not to actually be the case and he unceremoniously left the company afterwards. Source: I lived all this and was close with the domain

tormeh 3y ago

>There's literally not a single political party We're talking about people, not parties, and I've definitely met people who have this view. To them, the German way is the proper way, and any way that's easier must be cheating or skipping something. Of course they want digitalization, but they want a German digitalization. A good and proper German one, and not a flimsy foreign one. Of course this is nationalistic cope, but it's pretty common.