9 ms·

I am familiar with both German and Finnish bureaucracy. German bureaucracy is (in)famous for paperwork and using faxes. Citizens/residents have no unique ident

• rand846633 3y ago
  Anyone know more about this? Find this really interesting and surprising!
  • alibarber 3y ago
    As someone who was advised to wait 6-12 months for a tax refund in Finland (not a standard payroll/prepaid tax) [1] I'd say it's because 'the system' is still the old system from the past that hasn't entirely kept up with the fact that in this day and age: - A limited company is not always a giant manufacturing concern - An ever increasing amount of the population will not have been born in and will not be living their whole lives in Finland. IT is a nice frontend for it and can serve you in many languages and with the latest and greatest UX - but the actual processes and decisions are not keeping pace. Changing these is a high-friction, low-reward endeavour for politicians. [1] https://www.vero.fi/en/About-us/contact-us/processing-times-for-returns-and-applications/ https://www.vero.fi/en/About-us/contact-us/processing-times-...
    • anewhnaccount2 3y ago
      I thought those delays were meant to encourage you to declare everything in advance on your tax card.
      • alibarber 3y ago
        I am talking about transfer tax on property which is completely different. In my opinion, the tax card system effectively just moves the deadline for the tax return to Nov/December so you can ensure it's completely up to date then and not pay anything extra.
• lifestyleguru 3y ago
  IT in general is stuck in blind valley and doesn't make anything easier anymore with its aggressive outsourcing and profit extraction. The only systems which go quickly and efficiently are those against the interests of an average citizen - e.g. the covid certification apps determining and limiting basic citizen rights. Oftentimes I prefer to show up in person with ID and fetch a printout with confirmation, than to install their bloated sloppy apps tracking the shit out of me.
  • Beijinger 3y ago
    Biggest problem: Germans don't understand digitization. They often try to recreate the paper process with IT, instead of making a complete new setup. Example: Previously, you had to go to the City Hall or whatever in your pace of birth to get a birth certificate. Now you can email them, pay, and they mail you the certificate via snail mail. How it should be: Use an online token, log into your account, request a birth certificate and just print it. It should have a URL that can be used to verify that it is valid. This would be faster and the risk of forgery would be much lower. A seal - and Germans love seals, they wank of to seals - can be forged much easier.
    • tonis2 3y ago
      Yeah, I worked in a German startup for 2 years, managers were running it like we were manufacutring cars. Lots of decision's, made no sense in software development.
      • rs999gti 3y ago
        > Lots of decision's, made no sense in software development. But we must have process and governance in place. Let us set a meeting to discuss.
    • bratwurst3000 3y ago
      Yes those seals rly invite you to misuse them. It’s ridiculous easy to forge them.
    • 3y ago
• anewhnaccount2 3y ago
  The degradation comes from waves of austerity politics by right wing governments. These services are expensive and require staff to keep things going. Austerity ideology dictates that there simply must be inefficiency in public services, and cuts are the cure to this disease since this will cause the public sector to "make do and mend" and end up running more efficiently, rather than having a knock on effect and decrease the quality of the services. This is the policy direction responsible for the fall in the quality of public services in the UK, and for some reason Finland decided this was an excellent idea and is following suit. The SDP patched things up a little bit, but not as fast as things can be torn down.
  • lifestyleguru 3y ago
    > Austerity ideology dictates that there simply must be inefficiency in public services, and cuts are the cure to this disease since this will cause the public sector to "make do and mend" There is some weird notion in populace that if we cut the funding, the public services will "get handle of themselves" and become more cost efficient. That's what a reasonable individual would do in tougher times. What happens in reality is that the nepotist core in public services will entrench and be fine or even better off, while the society will be told to suck it up.
    • shoubidouwah 3y ago
      "Austerity is dropout"
    • sotillan 3y ago
      Whereas if funding is increased, that same nepotist core will suddenly discover their spirit of public service and ensure the money is spent on better delivery, instead of further enriching themselves? Honestly, the whole funding debate for public services is often so facile and ideologically entrenched. Both sides are right: Public services _are_ invariably inefficient, and cutting funding _does_ invariably do little to increase efficiency. But neither side will accept the validity of the other's argument and so we end up with this cycle of alternating governments imposing austerity and generosity.
• beAbU 3y ago
  For all it's many many faults, I have to say I'm sometimes surprised by how efficient some South African bureaucratic state organs function. To get a renewed passport is a 5 minute online form, electronic payment, and then a 30 minute appointment at a local bank branch to get biometrics taken. Then about 1-2 weeks later you can go and pick up your new passport. Driving license not much different. For most people, paying taxes is a non-event, and tax returns happens automatically in most cases. Then the bad: - Firearm licenses: more like months if not years in some cases. - Birth and marriage certificates: 4-6 months - Permission for building/construction/alterations: Don't even waste your time. - Healthcare: get private insurance if you value your life. - Public transport: lol It's interesting how in sufficiently large and complex bureaucratic systems (Governments, Microsoft, etc), you get little pockets of excellence because somewhere in the mess of it all, there is someone who cares about their job, and they put the effort in to make it better for their users/customers. In South Africa's case, these pockets of excellence are often and frequently replaced, because they are being measured by different metrics than what we as citizens care about, and deemed lacking: Party first, enable corruption, etc. So then you have these government institutions that every 10-15 years or so get renewed, and then coast on that renewal while it gradually goes to shit, before someone steps in and fixes it all up, before them being fired again for not allowing the right amount of corruption to take place. Vicious cycle.
  • miningape 3y ago
    This is interesting because I have the exact opposite experience. I'm a South African but I live in the EU, for me, I need to book my new passport 1 year+ in advance of it expiring because it takes on average about that long (if I pay the bribes).
    • jmopp 3y ago
      The trick is not to do it at the embassy, but to take a two-week holiday and do it in South Africa.
      • geraldhh 3y ago
        thou, you are in a world of hurt if it takes a extra day
• treprinum 3y ago
  I suspect the degradation came from Eastern Europe, what you wrote is what I was told EE looked like in the 80-90s.
  • GrumpySloth 3y ago
    What do you mean by that? Did Finland change location over time? Also, two Eastern European countries that I have first-hand knowledge of: Poland and Estonia are much more digitised and efficient at those things than Germany (and, from what GP wrote, it seems Finland as well?).
    • treprinum 3y ago
      The same processes that led to Eastern Europe in 80-90s ending up as a nightmare where everything took ages to be handled happened to Finland with the same outcome. Bad algorithms basically. Maybe PL/EST still remember how bad it was back then and make sure they are running better algorithms, whereas Finland has no clue how bad it can get due to a lack of experience?
    • askonomm 3y ago
      I don't know why does everyone on HN think that Estonia is Eastern Europe when it is actually Northern Europe (https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Europe https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Europe). All of the Baltic countries are Northern.
      • treprinum 3y ago
        It's the same as Czechia, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary being Eastern European when they are Central European. Soviet legacy, west vs east.
        • GrumpySloth 3y ago
          The popularisation of the concept of Central Europe stems from some people being ashamed of being from Eastern Europe and feeling inferior to Western Europe. Eastern Europe is defined by the Iron Curtain whose effects are still visible today, while Central Europe is a category created purely by selecting a region on the map without regard for political or cultural factors, just to push Eastern Europe further East and exclude some countries from it. It’s fairly arbitrary. I don’t see Eastern Europe as inferior and am not ashamed of being from a part of it, so I see no point in using an arbitrary term like Central Europe.
• ricardobayes 3y ago
  For what it's worth, while it does not often come up in a positive light on this forum (and others), Hungary has almost all processes digitalized. Passport renewal is an exception, but after a quick in-person appointment, you get your passport shipped to you in less than a week (usually), even to a foreign country. You have your taxes prepared for you automatically, you just need to click a button to accept the draft. That said social services is pretty bad, especially for elderly care, but to no fault of IT services. They even have a free, state-provided VPN if you want to watch TV programmes back home, from abroad.
• patall 3y ago
  Same experience in Sweden. It took me 1.5 years to get to full European healthcare (i.e European Health Insurance Card). Only to learn that moving within the country, they basically lose all your health records. Seems digitalization is not quite implemented for any non-totally-daily processes and as soon as a single human is needed in the line, there are not enough people.
• mharig 3y ago
  > You have a person number and authorities store everything centrally. A big brother nightmare for Germans. Should be a big brother nightmare for all humans. Your number is 666.
  • iacvlvs 3y ago
    Why? There’s always a lot of hand-wringing and FUD around giving people ID numbers, but never a coherent rational argument. What makes it a big brother nightmare for all humans?
    • ben_w 3y ago
      Like all automation, having a database of your population greatly increases your efficiency, without regard to whether this power is used to do good or to do evil. There are many still alive who remember the evils done by the Stasi, when I was a child, there were many who remembered the evils done by the Gestapo; when those are your core examples of a citizen database, such thing naturally seems "big brother". The irony is the mirror image: America seems almost* totally willing to have private databases while disliking government ones, Europe seems almost* totally willing to have government databases while disliking private ones. * to anyone about to reply "not I": don't be blind to the "almost", I know many here will be exceptions
      • mharig 3y ago
        > Like all automation, having a database of your population greatly increases your efficiency Really? For what purposes exactly?
        • ben_w 3y ago
          All the things that surveys do but where surveys would be really slow, repetitive, and suffer sub-population sampling biases; and all the things that censuses do but with better temporal resolution.
          • 3y ago
• deleted 3y ago
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• amanda99 3y ago
  It sounds like these are just issues with processes taking a long time. In other words, that there are long queues. Of course that is a problem too, but it sounds like there's less "active time" and it's more streamlined, if still with long wait times?
• jll29 3y ago
  > Citizens/residents have no unique identifier actually that's not true: people in Germany have MANY unique IDs: they have not one but TWO tax identifiers ("Steuernummer" and "Steuer ID"), social security number ("Sozialversicherungsnummer"), national ID number ("Personalausweisnummer"), passport number ("Reisepaßnummer") and health insurance ID ("Krankenversicherungsnumer"), among others.
  • usr1106 3y ago
    Yes, I know. But having many IDs means that your information cannot be found by the same ID in all offices and actually many companies, too. That's the way it works in Finland (Sweden, too). While that is a data protection nightmare from a German perspective it should at least allow efficient processes. But as I wrote efficiency is increasingly suffering in Finland, too.
  • FabHK 3y ago
    Several of these IDs change when you get a new Personalausweis, Reisepaß, or Health Insurance, respectively. They don't identify you, but the document or contract. Some of the tax identifiers might be specific to you and a tax authority, ie change when you move to a different Land.
• sternchenfee17 3y ago
  Try building a house in germany. We've been arguing with authorities, send hundreds (not an exaggeration) of papers to different involved parties, but still, one and a half year after purchasing a bit of real estate, we are not even allowed to start building. This includes dozens of funny anecdotes, an example would be changed rules for the width of your fence gate - meaning that you have to scrap the old one and have someone build a completely new one because it was 3cm (!) to narrow. Of course, it would take weeks after applying for the building license before any of their concerns would be communicated to us. I don't think digitalization would solve this. If you have a shitty process and digitalize it, you have a shitty digital process. I do think arbitrariness of the people involved at the government offices and the time it takes them to react is way more of an issue. If you just give me a bunch of paper to fill in, with actually understandable instructions, that's fine. Digitalization would save me a day here because I'd get it directly, but that doesn't really help if it takes six weeks for the clerk to actually react.
  • mnau 3y ago
    > doesn't really help if it takes six weeks for the clerk to actually react. Neighbouring country here. The clerk has to react within six weeks, but to satisfy the letter of law, the reply is "we received your requeat and it's being processed" The actual reply takes ~6 month.