[HN Gopher] Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving publi...
___________________________________________________________________
Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services
online
Author : valkrieco
Score : 209 points
Date : 2022-11-30 17:20 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.karlsnotes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.karlsnotes.com)
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Pretty basic article but Estonia is a fascinating place,
| especially for e-government. There was a great longform New
| Yorker article on it a few years back
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-di...
| Proven wrote:
| sdfhbdf wrote:
| The title is a litte misleading since > The
| Estonian government estimates that going digital has saved the
| state and its citizens, 820 years in time and resources
|
| It didn't save it it just estimates it and we're not sure how
| they arrived at this number.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| BS.
|
| It should be "820 years PER YEAR", and with a 1.3M people in
| Estonia, it equates to 5.4 hours per year. JUST 5.4 hours per
| year. Not impressive.
| andix wrote:
| Which is nearly one day of holiday people can save every year.
| So I would call it very impressive, as most people work during
| the opening hours of public services and would need to take
| time off to go there.
| machinekob wrote:
| 5.4h more like 10+ h as older and younger population is not
| doing anything that require spending times in public que, and
| it is very impressive not waiting extra 6-10h per year + twice
| that for transporting to and out of the government buildings.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's not impressive to you? Most of a day of dealing with
| government timewaste, every single year, is a lot to me.
| tdiff wrote:
| Would it be fair to say that 820 years is 0.3 days per Estonian
| citizen? Is saving that amount of time a significant achievement?
| Juliate wrote:
| +1.
|
| Careful still, public services are also a matter of human
| representation, of accessibility, to nurture the relation between
| (all) the citizens and the state (as it also is in the private
| sector, between a brand and customers).
|
| Moving public services online is great IFF it does not remove at
| the same time a satisfying option for offline/physical access to
| the same services, for those that are not able to use the online
| access (disabled, old, unused to computers or tablets, remote
| areas, etc. - those are still a significant part of the people,
| and even if, an equal access to public services is a must).
| skeletal88 wrote:
| Calm down, there still are physical offices where people can go
| and do their stuff, nobody is forcing people to use the online
| services.
| [deleted]
| some_random wrote:
| It felt like this was really low, but according to the most fun
| wolfram alpha query I've made in a while that's 5.68 hours per
| person!
|
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=hours+in+860+years+%2F+...
| chungy wrote:
| Online voting is a terrible idea rife with flaws, intentional and
| unintentional.
|
| In-person paper voting is the only reasonable system.
| kristianheljas wrote:
| I'd argue that a paper is much more easily
| tamperable/replaceable than a digital signature. That, of
| course depends on how much you trust the ID chip card security
| and mathematics around the encryption..
| Zanfa wrote:
| While online voting isn't perfect, in-person paper ballots
| aren't magic. Estonians had some 60-odd years of paper-only
| voting experience under the Soviet Union, didn't make one bit
| of difference when it came to the complete fabrication of the
| results.
| aaron695 wrote:
| imwillofficial wrote:
| The e-citizenship stuff is super cool too
| Genbox wrote:
| Estonia has greatly embraced the digital identity through smart
| cards. They have been on the forefront of digitalizing
| governmental services.
|
| Website: https://www.id.ee/en/
|
| Timeline of implementations: https://e-estonia.com/story/
|
| Github: https://github.com/open-eid
| kazinator wrote:
| That's the country from which Skype emerged; the first usable
| video calling experience, years ahead of everyone else.
| dghughes wrote:
| I'm in Canada and all I can think of is how my Mom, uncles, other
| older relatives do not have a computer. They have no interest in
| anything on a computer and have never touched one. You could put
| one in front of them powered on, logged in, web browser open, and
| they'd have no clue how to operate it to enter info.
|
| We had a hurricane here and Mom applied to the Red Cross for
| disaster relief. She got a PIN for her online banking which she
| doesn't have or ever will.
|
| There are quite a few people without computers. It's maddening to
| see some or proposed government services only be offered
| exclusively on the Internet.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Perhaps we should consider it akin to literacy. In the past,
| and indeed present, plenty of people couldn't read and so would
| need to seek help to access government services that required,
| for example, completing a form or reading instructions.
|
| Nowadays most people read (in my country, UK), though
| completing forms can have high literacy/intelligence demands.
| Some lack computer skills but almost everyone (in my country)
| has some access to computers in free local government libraries
| and in other local community centres. It's not terribly
| convenient, granted.
|
| So should we avoid offering services that need literacy to
| access, or just those that require _computer_ literacy? I 'd
| argue neither, but people should have long transition periods
| (multiple years) when a system is moving to access only via
| computer and government should ensure all communities have
| ongoing access to computers where that's reasonable.
| germanier wrote:
| It's a chicken-and-egg situation. Estonia has a much higher
| than average number of elderly using such online services.
|
| If you for any reason don't want to, you can still visit a
| government office in person to do your business.
| skeletal88 wrote:
| My 90 year old grandfather is doing lots of stuff online,
| needs help with the computer occasionally, but otherwise is
| doing ok.
|
| Well.. he finished the Technical University with cum laude in
| mechanics, that maybe helps.
| [deleted]
| vander_elst wrote:
| Saving 820 years is great, but it would be nice to define it
| better. From the article I not sure if they mean 820 man years in
| total or man years per year or something else. It would be useful
| to know how much energy was spent to achieve this e.g. of they
| spent 8000 man years to achieve this it would change the
| perspective.
|
| Edit: grammar
| itake wrote:
| concordDance wrote:
| "Man" is an ancient word that means both "human" and "male
| human" depending on context. The former usage actually
| predates the latter.
| itake wrote:
| why not say "human years" instead? The current word choice
| is open to marginalizing women.
| etage3 wrote:
| I think itake understands this and was making a point (an
| important one at that). Douglas R. Hofstadter made the same
| point (perhaps more eloquently) in "A Person Paper on
| Purity in Language"[0], which might be another avenue if
| you wish to understand what the parent comment was pointing
| at.
|
| [0]https://www.angelfire.com/rebellion/personpaper/
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It is not an important point in a context like "man-
| years".
| [deleted]
| vander_elst wrote:
| I didn't mean to gender, sorry if it was perceived that way.
| My understanding is that this is a standard industry term.
| Anyway, I'll try to use human years in the future.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| "Human years" makes it sound like you're differentiating
| from some pseudo timescale like 'dog years'. Man years
| doesn't have any connotation of sex of the people involved.
| Ironically the person objecting is the only one projecting
| a gendered interpretation on to it; it's like punching
| yourself in the face and complaining that punching people
| in the faces shouldn't be allowed.
|
| "Man" is just Saxon/Old English for person (and is
| considered to be from at least PIE origins).
|
| My late mum used to complain about the term Chair instead
| of Chairman, "I'm a person not a piece of furniture", she
| was chairman on lots of committees.
| rcarr wrote:
| all men are pigs so our life spans are only 20 years
|
| joke obviously
| 0x138d5 wrote:
| hiiele?
|
| On a serious note, while the eID/digital gov system is great and
| all it does have some jankiness. The address search system
| everyone uses has been a PITA for a while and the tax system
| still keels over for a day or so when the possibility of
| submitting returns opens. Then we had the case of one dude
| scraping several hundred thousand ID card pictures [0].
|
| Also the broadband part is so-so. Estonian internet is
| notoriously expensive and slow compared to our near peers [1].
|
| [0] https://news.err.ee/1608291072/hacker-downloads-close-
| to-300...
|
| [1] https://news.postimees.ee/7635673/estonia-s-home-internet-
| sp...
| Tade0 wrote:
| > hiiele?
|
| I live bits that give rare insights into other cultures.
|
| The description of the appropriate reddit page google-
| translates to "let's meet at the fire".
|
| Is that correct?
| Avamander wrote:
| More like "let's meet at the sacred forest" (to
| celebrate/rejoice).
|
| "Hiiele" is the allative form of "hiis"
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiis_(sacred_site) )
| Tade0 wrote:
| That's even better, thanks!
| skeletal88 wrote:
| When finland is mentioned on the internet then people post
| "torilla tavataan" - "lets meet at the market!!". So we
| estonians started saying "hiiele!" - lets meet.. at the
| sacred forest on the same occasion.
| ttobbaybbob wrote:
| so at 27k gdp per capita theyre saving ~$22m per year in lost
| productivity, probably growing each year. Seems like a pretty
| solid investment
| xwdv wrote:
| Unfortunately this is hardly anything. Consider that people spent
| enough time playing Halo 2 online to cross the Milky Way galaxy
| and come back.
| spicymaki wrote:
| Be careful what you wish for.
|
| For the US if you automate public services you are going to
| eliminate Federal, State, and Local bureaucratic jobs as well as
| the support roles to interface to these services. For example if
| you automated taxing, you would eliminate IRS employees as well
| as accountants and software services such as Turbo Tax. In the US
| we don't have universal healthcare, universal free education,
| etc. so you be eliminating millions of jobs without a safety net.
| Automation would have terrible economic repercussions. The
| extreme level of graft and incompetence would mean the actual
| automated services would not be very good and would be
| horrifically expensive to produce and maintain.
|
| I will take my number and wait on line.
| skeletal88 wrote:
| What? You are advocating for inefficient bureacracy because
| otherwise the time-wasting bureaucrats would be laid off? Is
| this sarcasm or you are serious with this?
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| Along the same lines, I found India's Aadhar system to be pretty
| extraordinary. If you can put your civil liberties concerns aside
| (and to be clear, I don't think you should), Aadhar has made govt
| services in India several orders of magnitude more efficient and
| fraud resistant. I recently sold a piece of property in India and
| it took literally 10 minutes to do the transaction at a local
| district office. You just go to a place and get a scan while
| signing a document that says you are transferring the property.
| That handles everything ... changing the owner in the public
| registry, etc.
|
| Compare that to buying a house in the US where you need to use
| all kinds of third party title insurers etc., because you can't
| necessarily be sure the person selling you the land actually has
| ownership of the land in the registry at the moment you are doing
| the sale.
|
| Also, payment systems in India charge merchants something like
| 0.1% or less, while credit card companies charge merchants 3-5%
| in the US. In India everything is cheap because online
| transactions are very secure ... your Aadhar identity allows you
| to generate one time codes that are sent to vendors to authorize
| payments. Even if the one time code is stolen, it can only be
| used one time. Contrast that with the USA where if someone just
| gets your social security number and address, they can often
| impersonate you and charge thousands of dollars against your
| identity. That insecurity has spawned billions of dollars of
| costs in the US economy and enriched Visa and Mastercard. Its
| dead weight on the economy.
| Avamander wrote:
| > I recently sold a piece of property in India and it took
| literally 10 minutes to do the transaction at a local district
| office. You just go to a place and get a scan while signing a
| document that says you are transferring the property. That
| handles everything ... changing the owner in the public
| registry, etc.
|
| Even that is excessive. Digital signatures (if available) do
| the job.
| myroon5 wrote:
| Even without changing processes, hundreds of years of time could
| be saved by reducing the frequency we have to interact with
| government at all
|
| For example, almost 20 American states require license renewal
| every 4 years or more frequently:
|
| https://ballotpedia.org/Driver%27s_license_costs_by_state,_2...
|
| When I renew, there's no test (not even vision), and they don't
| even retake my picture or let me update my height. They just
| print the same ID with new dates
|
| ---
|
| Obviously, Americans filing tax information the government
| already knows every year is another canonical example
| JTbane wrote:
| >Obviously, Americans filing tax information the government
| already knows every year is another canonical example
|
| Yeah it's pretty ridiculous, especially when you hold things
| like mutual funds. You have to figure out how much to pay every
| quarter. Why can't the gov't bill me with the info they already
| have?
| ryukafalz wrote:
| I'd go the other way; we really should require retesting for
| driver's license renewals.
|
| New Jersey for example just enacted a "safe passing" law
| earlier this year in an attempt to make bicyclists and
| pedestrians safer. But existing drivers will never have to
| demonstrate that they know this because we never retest people
| after they get their license once.
| spurgu wrote:
| Couldn't the government (or state) simply run ad campaigns
| for a couple of weeks informing the public of new changes?
|
| Edit: Most changes are not rocket science, you simply need to
| be aware of them.
| germanier wrote:
| A simple ad campaign running for a few weeks hardly reaches
| everybody. Not even close to.
| frenchy wrote:
| There's a difference between knowing the laws of the road,
| and being a competent enough driver that you can perform
| them. The rules are rarely, if ever, enforced, so a lot of
| drivers just figure it's not a big of a deal.
|
| It's easy to believe that road safety isn't that important
| when you're surrounded by several tons of plastic and metal
| armor.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Then we should have licenses for bicyclists too!
|
| The reason we have licenses (aka controls on who can drive
| cars) is to curb dangerous and irresponsible driving, mark
| drivers for driving egregiously, and remove people or not
| allow drivers on the road when they don't have the motor
| skills to navigate a vehicle on the road.
|
| Knowing the rules is secondary, if not tertiary. Otherwise
| bicyclists should also have licenses and license plates
| because rules apply to them as well.
| piva00 wrote:
| Rules apply to them but they aren't driving a 2-3 ton hunk
| of metal that's basically a murder machine. Their danger to
| other road users is much, much lower than from anything
| self-propelled just due to physics.
|
| Here in Sweden it doesn't matter how much right of way you
| have, if you are driving a car you're responsible for the
| safety of others in the road, even more if they're a
| pedestrian or cyclist. It's not excuse that a pedestrian
| was jaywalking or whatever bizarre law to limit access to
| the road for people you got in the US, you are ultimately
| responsible for the safety of other users. You're drilled
| and tested on that in your driving lessons and exams, you
| will fail your driving test if you fail to yield for a
| pedestrian at any moment, even if it was just briefly not
| pressing the brake pedal way before another road user is in
| danger.
|
| This is a false equivalence, yes, the road is shared and
| has rules but one user of the road is safely driving on
| tons of metal powered by hundreds of horsepower, the other
| is pedaling a bike.
|
| Degree and level matter. Don't hold such a black-and-white
| view of the world, it's reductionist and not very smart.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| It's usually an equity issue, or championed as such by equity
| groups. America is so car dependent that for folks at the
| margins failing a driving test is the equivalent of losing
| your job. That's why DL renewals almost rarely require any
| re-testing and never require demonstrating driving skills.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Hitting pedestrians also poses issues for folks at the
| margins, yet we don't seek to educate those people on how
| to avoid this potentially life destroying situation.
| notch656a wrote:
| I think you would be hard pressed to find someone
| currently living with a license that got it at a time
| where it was OK to will-nilly hit pedestrians.
| CJefferson wrote:
| I bet I can find plenty of people who have a licence, but
| if retested now would fail -- which suggests they now
| can't be trusted not to willy-nilly hit pedestrians.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I agree but a lot of equity groups are not willing to
| advocate for pedestrian lives. The perception a lot of
| Americans have is that folks are either walking because
| they have literally no option and are thus probably not
| really working-class folks or they're out for recreation.
|
| There's a growing number of organizations advocating for
| pedestrian and cyclist safety but they have a lot less
| funding and fewer connections that equity groups which
| protect drivers. If you have the opportunity in your
| area, donate to such a group or help make one yourself.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Nonsense. It's an elderly issue, everyone knows elderly
| people shouldn't be on the road but no one wants to take
| their licenses (they vote in droves).
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| That is one end of this issue, yes. But there's more to
| it than just the elderly.
| Swizec wrote:
| > failing a driving test is the equivalent of
|
| Devil's advocate: Maybe you shouldn't be driving, if you
| might fail a driving test. Being tested on this should be a
| complete non-issue for anyone with a few years of real
| world driving experience.
| notch656a wrote:
| Arizona driver license don't expire until you are 65. The
| linked website is innaccurate.
| giantg2 wrote:
| They do if they're REAL ID. By law they can only be valid up
| to 8 years.
| [deleted]
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's a decade over here, same for most forms of ID; there was a
| period where it was reduced to 5 years, but that was due to
| developing digital technologies, that is, chips on board the
| documents - they foresaw that they might be outdated or
| insecure in a few years, and they were right.
| Arrath wrote:
| Renewing online sure takes a lot of the burden out of the
| regular renewals.
|
| Of course, I'm now 33 and still using a picture of 21yo me on
| my license which gets me second glances from bar tenders, TSA,
| etc. But if it keeps me from having to go in to the DMV...
| dottedmag wrote:
| I think the point was not to renew online, but renew less
| often.
| Arrath wrote:
| It was indeed, but in absence of 20-year licenses or the
| like, I'll happily take the reduced friction of easier
| online renewals.
| giantg2 wrote:
| REAL ID requires renewal every 8 years or less.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Will they even allow that for REAL ID now?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Yes, I renewed my REAL ID earlier this year entirely
| online.
|
| It's possible that it would have been more complicated if I
| had changed my address or needed to change any other
| information.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Seems odd they don't want an up to date photo.
| kristianheljas wrote:
| They do, you need to submit at-most 6 month old photo
| while renewing. Or go to the office to take one. Either
| way, you also still need to go get the document from the
| office as it is only handed over by person (but you can
| pre-book a time slot!). Passport is a bit more
| complicated, since it requires fingerprints as well.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Well then it's not "entirely online" like the other
| poster says.
| Arrath wrote:
| Good question, I still need to get my REAL ID.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I got an online renewal for a REAL ID, _but_ that was for a
| 4 year replacement of a 4 year card, and there was specific
| language about having renewed in person the previous time.
|
| So technically yes, but an 8 year REAL ID that has to be
| renewed in person would be strictly better.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| That's mostly an american problem, not a "government bad"
| problem.
| dottedmag wrote:
| I've got a driver's license in another country, and it's
| still up for renewal every 5 years.
| rospaya wrote:
| Most countries treat driver's licences seriously, not like
| the US.
|
| It takes months of classes and driving hours, exams and
| tests to get one where I live. Renewals mean getting your
| eyes checked, no photos etc.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Sounds exactly the same as the US. The question is: how
| difficult are the exams and tests? In the US, the written
| exams are 80% irrelevant information that you pass by
| wrought memorization right before, and the driving test
| is trivial (parallel park, left turn, k-turn, right turn
| back to start).
|
| At least that was my experience in New Jersey.
| imperfect_blue wrote:
| It's almost a tautology. All things being equal, the less
| time spent on bureaucratic processes, the better.
|
| Its just so that governments (and academic institutions,
| nonprofits, healthcare, etc.) are the natural environments
| for bureaucratic bloat.
| joenot443 wrote:
| Same story in much of Canada.
| boplicity wrote:
| It's not even necessarily an American problem; when I lived
| in Washington State, the last time I got a renewal was
| expedient and surprisingly efficient. I was impressed with
| how well run the place was.
| [deleted]
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| its part of why i moved there from germany. its crazy how
| especially germany treats its citizens time as an unlimited
| resource without any respect what that could mean for peoples
| lives. neurodivergence is especially amplified in such a system
| if you have strong adhd or depression like me, 1 or 2 hours
| paperwork per month is not just 2h but potentially weeks of
| dreading and self hatred. knowing what life could have been like
| it hurts to think of all the lost time but i am truly thankful i
| can finally experience it. there needs to be something like a
| human right to be left the fuck alone by your country if the task
| can be done automatically or semi-automatically.
| andix wrote:
| In a lot of European countries there is a system to legally sign
| documents with a digital signature. Either via SMS/App TAN - like
| for online banking - or a smart card/HSM (mostly used by
| corporations).
|
| I think Austria moved even more services to the digital age then
| Estonia. It is not fancy, nor modern. But a lot of documents
| primarily exist only in a digital form (all laws, court files,
| official documents, financial administration documents, ...).
| They are often printed out, but they are just a random piece of
| paper, just a "copy" of the original. The official and valid
| version is the digitally signed PDF.
|
| It is mostly implemented via some really boring and antiquated
| Java Server Pages HTML forms, that are not always easy to use.
| But they work nearly all the time, and once you send them you
| immediately get a signed and legally binding confirmation that it
| was filed.
|
| The roots of the system go back to the early 2000s, and used
| elliptical cryptography right from the start. Which was really
| hard back then to deal with, because most libraries or
| applications didn't support it yet. For example native Windows
| support came only with Windows 7.
|
| In Austria everyone and every company that has E-mail is required
| to accept digital signatures. If you cancel your phone contract
| with a signed PDF via E-Mail the company can't refuse to accept
| it, as every court will instantly decide in your favour.
| sdfhbdf wrote:
| It does sound great when it works. It's awesome that Estonia
| succeeded. I do believe this is a really hard problem -
| digitising public services - to solve at scale.
|
| Whenever you have bigger countries you almost always have several
| levels of local governance - state, county or Land. These local
| governments often work with full autonomy and do not share date
| with the central government.
|
| In this case even solving such simple and basic thing as a
| centralised login solution is difficult since why would the owner
| of the centralised login solution should have knowledge of which
| citizen used which local governments service?
|
| I believe that's why we see so many unfinished systems not
| working together because they have to be built completely
| separately by each local government since they operate in
| autonomy.
| skeletal88 wrote:
| The success of our Estonian digitalized government services is
| possible because we have:
|
| A nationwide digital ID, that can be used to authenticate
| someone,
|
| We have a National Id Number for every citizen and residence
| permit holder, that acts as a global foreign key for all the
| services, the number alone can't be used for anything, is
| public, and should not and is not used for authenticating
| anyone.
|
| The Id number enables the next thing: it is mandated by laws
| that every type of information should only be stored once. My
| name, date of birth, where I live and document photo is stored
| in the citizens registry. If elections start then the local
| municipality knows who are it's residents and everyone is sent
| an e-mail or letter about where they can go to cast the vote.
| If I want to renew my driver's license then I can choose to use
| the photo I last used to get a new passport or Id document.
|
| The one place to store one type of information is enabled by
| the national id number, because we know exactly that this
| person in this registry is the same one with the same number in
| the other registry, even though they may have the same name and
| date of birth, there is no possibility to confuse someone. And
| this makes keeping data safe easier, because it's easier to
| secure one database, than twenty ones that some random
| government departments would otherwise have to store my name,
| address or whatever else they would need. And their data would
| be mostly out of date, since it would get updated only when I
| interacted with them.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _We have a National Id Number for every citizen and
| residence permit holder, that acts as a global foreign key
| for all the services, the number alone can 't be used for
| anything, is public, and should not and is not used for
| authenticating anyone._
|
| It's important to point out that a key part of this is having
| personal privacy protection (eg GDPR) that prevents private
| companies from abusing this identifier for their own
| nefarious purposes. Without private protections, such an
| identity number becomes a vulnerability for individuals. Like
| in the United States as it stands, it's a _feature_ that
| giving out your social security number might result in a huge
| headache, otherwise every retailer would demand it for their
| consumer surveillance ( "loyalty") programs etc.
| skeletal88 wrote:
| Even without my number the retailers know my e-mail or
| whatever else I used to sign up for their loyality cards or
| benefits, they already know what I buy. If they know my
| personal number, then they can't know anything in addition
| to what they would have without it.
|
| But having strong protection for privacy is a must also.
|
| Every time someone accesses my data in the national
| registries the access is logged - who did it and when. For
| example I can see that the city I live in is checking if I
| still live there, because they offer free public transport
| to residents. Also I can see that the doctor I visited
| looked at my data, maybe also the aphotecary where I got my
| prescribed medicine from, because.. all the prescriptions
| are also digital documents, very-very rarely something is
| put on paper (for example, when a vet doctor prescribes
| some antibiotics and I can get them from the apothecary).
| Othewise I just give them my id card, they look at the
| number, type it in, and can see what I have been
| prescribed.
| argulane wrote:
| Enabling ID card login for any random website usually only
| requires adding few config lines to your app revrese proxy. I
| wrote about it here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33639317
| colechristensen wrote:
| Locally they completely redid the computer systems of the DMV a
| few years back... And botched it. Everything started taking
| twice as long and you wouldn't get a new license for weeks or
| months after you went in.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| In Spain they're trying... but not really succeeding.
|
| > Whenever you have bigger countries you almost always have
| several levels of local governance - state, county or Land.
| These local governments often work with full autonomy and do
| not share date with the central government.
|
| Here this is particularly relevant with healthcare. In some
| regions I get full coverage with my regional card with no
| questions asked. In others I have to go through hoops, and
| apparently they have no way of knowing my clinical history.
|
| > In this case even solving such simple and basic thing as a
| centralised login solution is difficult since why would the
| owner of the centralised login solution should have knowledge
| of which citizen used which local governments service?
|
| In Spain they tried to solve this with DNIe (your national
| identity card has a chip) and cetificates. Turns out it's quite
| difficult to make it work for 99% of the people, and even if
| you're tech savvy some government portals make it SO HARD that
| you just want to give up.
|
| In a job I had before they used VMs with Windows XP and
| IExplorer for some services.
|
| It improved a lot in last years, but the improvement is in
| areas where you have to pay money, they've got fast for that.
| Everything else is still a mess.
|
| So in the end they'd come up with Cl@ave 365 with is a
| login/password solution you have to set up in person into some
| government office but it doesn't give you access to the full
| catalog of services, so you still need DNIe/Certificate.
|
| The thing is, they still get the money from you. Nobody gets
| fired. Friendly contractors still get money. There's no rush to
| improve. They have no incentives.
|
| But the worst thing is that they have this mess going on, and
| when old people goes to some government office they tell them
| to go online and do their own thing.
|
| Pretty much like companies. Feels nice to pay taxes for a
| service isn't being provided.
|
| There's people pushing to get this fixed, but the spanish state
| is... like an angry elephant.
| germandiago wrote:
| Espana es un desastre. Yo me he ido. Y va a ser dificil que
| vuelva. Vaya como esta el tema... de pena todo.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Podria ser mucho peor, el problema no es lo mal que esta,
| el problema es que en terminos generales no mejora.
|
| Hay paises en el este de Europa que claramente estan
| progresando, sus estados, su economia, su sociedad.
|
| Espana cada vez esta mas dividida, pobre, y su sociedad mas
| tensionada.
| germanier wrote:
| Which is why countries like Germany roll out federated
| decentralized login solutions - it's just a really slow process
| due to (among many other factors) the humongous number of
| stakeholders to involve.
| orblivion wrote:
| Did they somehow figure out online voting or are they courting
| disaster here?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Multiple independent studies show there are vulnerabilities in
| their system.
| Avamander wrote:
| Not to say everything is perfect, but I'd like to see those
| credible studies.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Google search has many. Take your pick.
| Avamander wrote:
| Thought so.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If you thought so, then why post what you did?
| blibble wrote:
| personally I don't want voting done online or with any machine
| involvement
|
| at all, ever
| superjan wrote:
| ... and I bet they spent it on tiktok and instagram.
| rcarr wrote:
| Until there's a solar flare and instead it's just cost them 1640
| years. Or a catastrophic computer virus. Or any number of black
| swan disaster scenarios.
|
| I'm a tech guy and I do think that this is good news. I just hope
| that the people in charge of designing these systems have also
| thought about what happens if these systems catastrophically
| fail. And that measuring things like '820 years saved' are only
| really claims you can make after waiting a long period of time to
| ensure it's proven itself stable.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Black swan events affect non-digital information as well. How
| many paper records have been lost to fire, floods and simple
| decay over the millennia? At least with digital records there's
| the chance that they're backed up offsite somewhere
| rcarr wrote:
| Personally I think the ideal system would include both. Maybe
| a digital system that is periodically (say once a year)
| transferred to tape and stored in a secure facility like the
| Svalbard Seed Vault.
| culturestate wrote:
| _> Maybe a digital system that is periodically (say once a
| year) transferred to tape and stored in a secure facility_
|
| This has been standard procedure (not at Svalbard,
| obviously, but at one or more secure offsite facilities)
| for every critical data system I've ever personally
| encountered in regulated industry, though rotations are
| usually weekly/monthly rather than yearly.
| kneebonian wrote:
| > This has been standard procedure
|
| Are they testing the backups and restoring from them
| regularly, because if they aren't there isn't any backup
| happening.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| For this kind of system, probably very yes.
|
| But I don't blame you for asking, when there are stories
| of irreplaceable nuclear test data being stuffed on some
| RAIDs and then nobody replacing the disk failures for
| years and years...
| rcarr wrote:
| This is good to know. I've never had the privilege of
| working on such a system so it is nice to know that this
| kind of thing is actually happening. Especially when
| government preparation for any potential pandemic seemed
| to be piss poor right across the board.
| germanier wrote:
| After recognizing that risk, Estonia famously signed an
| international treaty with Luxemburg "in the spirit of the
| Vienna Convention" to host an offsite backup (and plans to
| extend such initiatives).
|
| https://www.riigiteataja.ee/aktilisa/2280/3201/8002/Lux_Inf
| o...
| tapland wrote:
| Isn't it all still stored digitally though? Paper tax forms
| that have to be sent in are still processed to be read and
| stored digitally, but it would be much easier to not have to
| send the paper forms.
|
| The solar storm will strike individual systems that aren't
| connected as well.
| kneebonian wrote:
| This highlights one of the things I've recognized, for a long
| time the digital existed beside the paper, the computer often
| had problems and people knew things would have problems so they
| would always have a manual paper backup. "The HR computer is on
| the fritz and can get paychecks out, well wheel out the file
| folders, and get everyone in HR some ballpoint pens because
| they're here until midnight", but nowadays digital first really
| means digital only, and we see the consequences of that when
| people are no longer able to do rational or reasonable things
| because the computer won't allow it.
|
| "Sorry I know this document has to have your legal name, but
| unfortunately the system can't handle a character with an
| accent have you thought about changing your name instead?"
|
| I mean I am starting to see more and more places, that don't
| have a til or register, just a tablet and an app which sure
| saves you some overhead, but if a backhoe decides to dig
| through the fiber line, congratulations your shop just got shut
| down until it works agian.
|
| Now people will say "bad things could happen in the old days
| to!" That is true, but the difference was if bad things
| happened you generally had some measure of control and ability
| to effect change and at least find some temporary stop gap, the
| problem is now we have lost all autonomy because the shift to
| digital has also meant loss of control and locality.
|
| Back in the day if the power went out you could open up a
| receipt book and a ledger and keep taking payments until it
| came back on, now you can sit and twiddle your thumbs.
|
| My point is if you are "digital first" that means you are
| "digital only" and you sure as hell need to figure out a backup
| quick because it turns out shooting magic beams of light,
| across continents, has many more failure cases than a locked
| file folder.
| culturestate wrote:
| _> if a backhoe decides to dig through the fiber line,
| congratulations your shop just got shut down until it works
| agian. ... Back in the day if the power went out you could
| open up a receipt book and a ledger and keep taking payments
| until it came back on, now you can sit and twiddle your
| thumbs._
|
| This is nothing a good UPS and a standby 5G modem couldn't
| handle. Digital systems _can_ be made reliable and redundant,
| but most people don't want to go through the effort (or
| expense) to make it happen.
| giantg2 wrote:
| My thought is that adversarial state actors are the biggest
| threat. Didn't Russia interfere with some of their services at
| one point?
| rcarr wrote:
| Yes, considering they're on the doorstep of Russia and
| Belarus this is a fairly likely scenario. If their power
| utilities were targeted the way Ukraine's have been how many
| of these systems are still going to be able to run? That said
| if you've imposed martial law and men aren't allowed to leave
| the country because they've got to stay and fight then at
| least demand for your online passport service will have
| dropped by at least 50%
| Avamander wrote:
| If things get targeted with physical attacks like that, you
| won't be getting a passport internet or no internet, in
| impacted areas. It will be the least of your concerns.
| rcarr wrote:
| The last sentence was a bit of dark humour mate, I
| probably should have put a sarcasm tag on it. Probably
| should have said 'on the plus side' which is a bit more
| of a common way to start those kinds of jokes
| chefandy wrote:
| So much government data is temporal. Many already have strict
| archiving guidelines that mandate destroying certainly classes
| of documents after some number of years... many are single-
| digit. Nobody needs a copy of which city councilman voted to
| approve new speed bumps on Main St. 20 years ago, or your first
| 2 rejected applications for permits to remodel your bathroom.
| Most archivists are pretty aware of the problems with digital
| storage and know how to mitigate it.
| pasttense01 wrote:
| There 87,576 governments in the U.S. [federal, state, county,
| city, township, school district, special purpose district]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_the_United.
| ..
|
| Only a very small percent have an archivist.
| chefandy wrote:
| Many have policies informed by them. Even the town hall in
| the little 3k population town I grew up in had pretty
| standard data retention/destruction processes.
| ElKrist wrote:
| Any modern society is relying on digital supports for most of
| its administration. Estonia is just proposing more "frontends"
| to its citizens. Not all of them decide to use it btw (article
| mentions 46.9% of people use online voting)
|
| So if we're talking about "black swan disaster scenarios" or
| "catastrophic computer virus", I don't see any difference
| between Estonia and other countries.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Oh yeah, because those problems wouldn't affect low tech
| platforms at all.
| jen729w wrote:
| "Oh but this requires a government ID card and I'll never allow
| that! Liberty, freedom, something!"
|
| ...later...
|
| "Hello sir, you've just started a new job. In order for that to
| happen I'm going to need copies of your passport, driver's
| licence, medicare card, citizenship certificate, and one recent
| bank statement showing your full name and address." [Actual
| experience of mine, recently. Australia.]
|
| "Sure! Here they are, which random web portal that I've never
| heard of would you like me to upload them to?"
| Reason077 wrote:
| I wonder how many years the US could save its citizens by
| modernizing and digitizing the IRS, DMV, etc. Tens of thousands?
| Hundreds of thousands?
| icoder wrote:
| US democracy could change by having a central registry of
| everyone, ensuring everyone gets their voting pass
| automatically, skipping the faulty and bumpy process of voter
| registration amd inequality of identification-ability
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The opposition to national registries and national ID here is
| extremely strong.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The IRS/tax problem is one of corporate lobbying and partisan
| politics (usually the proposals to reduce or eliminate tax
| regulations are met by opposition).
| jeffbee wrote:
| I recently discovered that the U.S. Social Security
| Administration has business hours ... for their website. They
| operate a website that is closed at night and on weekends. One
| is hard-pressed to imagine the level of IT dysfunction
| necessary to reach this point.
| eropple wrote:
| I investigated that once, and I don't think it's IT
| dysfunction in that case. My understanding (because I found
| this odd as well) is that it's because the support load for
| that site is so high, and the likelihood of abandoned
| processes without support so high, that the best solution
| they had at whatever point in time they instituted that was
| business-hours operation.
| minhazm wrote:
| The Bangladesh Embassy in D.C. had a similar issue a few
| years ago. They had a document you needed to fill out that
| was just hosted on someones computer and when that person
| would shut their computer down each night or over the weekend
| the link would stop working. They've at least fixed that
| since then.
| baybal2 wrote:
| anotherman554 wrote:
| I have not researched this but rather than being a sign of IT
| dysfunction my guess would be the government contracts out
| the maintenance of the web site to the private sector and the
| contract specs happen to be written to say it will be closed
| on nights and weekends. In theory this makes the contract
| cheaper than if the government was buying 24/7 support.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| It would seem to us that nights and weekends are the most
| convenient time for citizens to access government services
| such as this. But the things that are down for maintenance
| are not our publicly-accessible frontends, they're the
| backend databases that the administration uses internally
| as well.
|
| So it would seem that all the worker bees in government
| offices rely on having access to those backend databases
| during USA office hours, and the only time they can
| realistically be shut down is while the civil servants are
| off the clock.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I view a database that needs to go down for maintenance
| as "IT dysfunction".
| llanowarelves wrote:
| IRS is same way: have to get EIN through form during business
| hours.
|
| Long ago, the Best Buy website also closed then opened during
| business hours.
| antihero wrote:
| Probably so that there's no backlog buildup over the weekend?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Backlog of? You can go to SSA.gov and look at your
| statements, but only if it's weekday business hours in the
| lower 48, otherwise you cannot.
| viburnum wrote:
| Article didn't mention the best part:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once-only_principle
|
| Basically the government isn't allowed to ask you for any
| information more than once. They already know!
| andix wrote:
| That sounds scary.
| skeletal88 wrote:
| Can you explain why?
|
| Why would having every government department, hospital,
| doctors/dentists office keep your data separately, probably
| in some unsecured excel file or whatever?
|
| When we have one registry for everything, they can keep it
| secure by having some proper security guys design and audit
| it, we can see who has accessed my data and when, etc. If a
| hospital would keep your health records in their own system
| then.. they'd probably have some low paid IT guy design
| something and leak it accidentally online.
| andix wrote:
| Because I don't want them to connect all the data without
| my consent. I don't want single government employees to
| have access to all my data at once.
| [deleted]
| alberth wrote:
| Homeless / Underprivelleged?
|
| How does moving things online work for those in poor economic
| conditions since they might not have online access (no smart
| phone, etc).
| andix wrote:
| You can still go to the office and do it in person. It also
| comes with the benefit, that a lot of public offices can also
| provide you with different services they couldn't do
| previously. Before you needed to go to town A and get a
| document, add it to the paperwork and file at town B. Now town
| B can fetch the document in your name from town A, or town A
| can file the document in your name at town B.
| dottedmag wrote:
| They can go to the local council / municipality and get the
| help there (either computers they can use for free, or from the
| clerks who can help them).
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think this just adds the option and doesn't eliminate the in-
| person version.
| skeletal88 wrote:
| Correct. There are still physical offices where people can go
| to do their stuff, with clerks sitting behind desks, etc.
| Nobody is left out, doing stuff online is just an option 99%
| people use.
| andrewia wrote:
| In addition to public computers and physical offices,
| smartphones are owned by a large portion of homeless people
| (especially if younger) because they're quite affordable. It
| looks like a basic Estonian phone plan, plus financing for a
| budget smartphone, is only 20 EUR/month. Estonia has no free
| phone plan (like the "obamaphone" program in the US), but low
| income people can submit 200 EUR of expenses per year for
| essentials.
| Avamander wrote:
| There's basically always the option to use a library or its
| WiFi. In the case of voting, one can just do it in person.
| thsbrown wrote:
| Estonia using KSI Blockchain for government networks seems
| relevant here. I would love to get more info on the nitty gritty
| of how it's being used specifically though. None the less it does
| seem like a good use case of Blockchain tech.
|
| [1] https://e-estonia.com/solutions/cyber-security/ksi-
| blockchai...
| jacooper wrote:
| Another country that is using E-goverment effectively is Saudi
| Arabia, almost everything is digital.
|
| As for privacy, What is privacy? Do you have something to hide?/s
| moffkalast wrote:
| As if any other authoritarian regime throughout history with
| analog paper bureaucracy ever had any problems finding anything
| they needed. At least with file encryption there actually isn't
| any way to bribe/threaten the clerk to show you the file.
| beorno wrote:
| Time wasted filling in forms and talking to service staff should
| really be tracked and associated with the business or government
| agency, then it's possible to actually assign a "bureaucracy/red-
| tape tax" based on the hours they waste for people using the
| service.
|
| Without externalizing the cost of all the time wasted, it's just
| too easy to push time-costs on to the consumers/citizens. It's
| already a huge problem, and I suspect a major cause of loss of
| productivity in the western world.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Time wasted filling in forms and talking to service staff
| should really be tracked and associated with the business or
| government agency
|
| Isn't there a US law on this? The Paperwork Reduction Act?
| gumby wrote:
| Only for the federal government, and as far as I can tell
| only for "regular people" forms. I.e. if you fill out an NSF
| proposal or want to drill an oil well or fill out Form D for
| a stock sale the forms don't seem to include any estimates.
|
| I know the time required to fill out an NSF proposal is "how
| long is a piece of string" but parts of it (some of the
| financial portions) are as boilerplate as an IRS tax form.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I don't get what's 'in it' for people to have overly
| complicated forms. Like they have to store all the data and
| in some cases manually input it (like customs forms.)
| What's the benefit?
|
| Ideally people would have a single universal identifier and
| then I'd never need to put my date of birth or tax number
| on another form again.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Even with the same amount of work or service provided, under-
| staffing absolutely consumes and destroys peoples productivity.
| What an awful waste it is to take the morning off work to go
| somewhere like the DMV, wait forever in line and see half the
| service counters empty. Sure, the government saved on some
| staff salary but society lost more in productivity.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| And then those empty counters and slow service are used as
| evidence that the government is incompetent and should have
| its budget reduced further. It's a vicious cycle and I am
| confident the reduced service is a deliberate attempt to
| undermine confidence in government.
|
| See also: bans on common-sense measures like including sales
| tax in price tags, making it easier to pay income taxes.
| chongli wrote:
| _a deliberate attempt to undermine confidence in
| government_
|
| Yes. The strategy is known as "starve the beast" [1] and it
| is pursued with ferocious determination by its proponents.
| The goal is to create some kind of minimal government
| libertarian paradise.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
| notch656a wrote:
| I thought starve the beast was where non-wartime federal
| spending as a percent of GDP increased multiple times
| over the past 100 year period. The beast to be starved
| being the individual citizen and businesses.
|
| Yes you can see, the beast has been horribly starved.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S
| piva00 wrote:
| Looking at general spending doesn't tell you absolutely
| anything _where_ the spending is going to and doesn 't
| enable any kind of cost-benefit analysis. It's a
| meaningless metric to derive any argument from.
|
| Spending on services that are multipliers of productivity
| is very different than spending on the military, for
| example. Spending on public services that improves
| citizens' life like healthcare, parks, schools, culture,
| easiness of bureaucracy (e.g.: permits for construction,
| licencing of activities, etc.) is a completely different
| beast than spending on politicians benefits, military
| drills, and so on.
| notch656a wrote:
| Ah so spending is a 'meaningless metric'. Weird you
| didn't reply that to starve-the-beast OP.
| piva00 wrote:
| Starve the beast is about starving specific services with
| the goal of dismantling them by causing a negative
| sentiment in the public. Like what the Tories are doing
| to the NHS, you start dismantling it by underfunding the
| service, which forces cost-cutting (usually meaning
| diminished staff or changes to regulations on benefits,
| working hours, etc.).
|
| Don't really understand your deflection and tone, it was
| completely uncalled for and doesn't at all address the
| point of my comment. Please, don't do that here on HN, I
| come here to foster intelligent and interesting
| discussions, not to read mindless hot takes and
| deflections.
| notch656a wrote:
| >Don't really understand your deflection and tone
|
| If you don't understand something, you admit what you say
| below is a lie.
|
| > it was completely uncalled for and doesn't at all
| address the point of my comment
|
| Here is a learning opportunity. If you don't understand
| something, do not just shortcut to believing it was
| uncalled for. The fact you don't understand makes it
| clear you don't know whether it addresses your point.
| piva00 wrote:
| You're just a fucking asshole, aren't you?
| Gud wrote:
| To play devils advocate - sometimes the system itself is not
| just broken, it's completely wrong! Where I'm from(Sweden) I
| can't imagine going to the DMV even for just a second. So
| asking for better staffing at the service counters at the DMV
| sounds silly to me
| tablespoon wrote:
| > To play devils advocate - sometimes the system itself is
| not just broken, it's completely wrong! Where I'm
| from(Sweden) I can't imagine going to the DMV even for just
| a second. So asking for better staffing at the service
| counters at the DMV sounds silly to me
|
| Do you not have driving tests in Sweden? Does Sweden allow
| residents to submit any random picture of their choice for
| their drivers license?
|
| As an American, the only times I have to go to the DMV are
| when I have renew my license (every 4-5 year), and that
| seems mainly to take a (simple) vision test and get my
| photo taken. They also give tests to new drivers and people
| moving in from out of state.
| piva00 wrote:
| Any time I had to go to Traffikverket (equivalent to the
| DMV), Skatteverket (tax agency, your IRS) or Polisen (the
| police, to get passports or national IDs) which are the
| only 3 agencies that I had ever to interact with to get
| pictures collected from, I book an appointment online for
| a time slot; I show up 10-15 min before my scheduled time
| and wait for the call for my booking; Go in, talk to
| someone, take pictures/collect fingerprints and get out.
|
| It's very, very easy.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| I bet you USAA's Insurance run DMV would be a lot more
| efficient and have good customer service, but hey, we don't
| want any Ayn Rands around here
| colechristensen wrote:
| AAA does run some DMVs and the service is considerably
| better in my experience.
| whafro wrote:
| They do this here in Massachusetts, but they aren't full-
| service. I just bought out my lease, and have to go to a
| real DMV to process the title.
|
| When you only have to handle the simple stuff, it's much
| easier to make it a great experience. AAA is basically
| the EZPass lane for the DMV.
|
| That's not to say that a full-service DMVs shouldn't be
| significantly better in most cases, though.
| [deleted]
| te_chris wrote:
| How anyone alive today can think that is beyond me.
| Everytime I call anything these days I get 3 minutes of
| disclaimers about why I should use their website or app
| instead and a pre-recorded sob story about being really
| busy etc etc just to try and break me before I even get
| into a queue to be connected to someone. 2022 is a
| dehumanising time to be alive and just get the most basic
| shit done.
| [deleted]
| AyyWS wrote:
| I worked for a private company contracted to provide a
| portion of a public service and later got employed by the
| the government agency.
|
| - The contractor had no budget. Our servers were out of
| date and we were running out of date OSes and software. We
| were all paid below standard and overworked.
|
| - We had a tiny budget at the agency to buy things at the
| very end of the year. We ran up to date software and OSes,
| except for a few large complicated systems that were setup
| with grant money. We were all paid well below standard. I
| was no longer on call at all times of the day and night.
|
| Contract awards go to the lowest bidder.
| pifm_guy wrote:
| But if the lowest bidder has some kind of penalty to pay
| if average queueing time goes over 15 minutes or random
| members of the public rate the service provided below 3/5
| stars, then they'll do a much better job.
| feet wrote:
| That doesn't exist because those contracts are awarded to
| friends of politicians. You don't penalize a friend, do
| you?
| [deleted]
| derefr wrote:
| Here in British Columbia, Canada, our equivalent of the DMV
| is run by a Crown Corporation, ICBC. I've never had a
| problem with the wait times. (Mind you, they generally
| require you to pre-reserve a general timeslot to come in;
| so, like a restaurant, they can just say they're full for a
| given half-hour and push people to coming in earlier/later.
| That by itself fixes a lot of the issues around wait
| times.)
| IncRnd wrote:
| Why don't we want Ayn Rands around here?
|
| Where I live that's exactly what we have. We have a number
| of privately owned tag agencies that handle most requests
| which don't require an in-person visit to the DMV (like a
| new photo id).
|
| This is fast and takes far less time than visiting the DMV.
| The various DMVs are bloated beasts with too-large budgets,
| yet they can't seem to staff people at all their windows.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Why do you think that? Businesses cut staffing just as much
| as governments do. They already got your money, why would
| they care about spending more money on you when they know
| it's a pain in the ass to switch to another "provider"?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| A major loss of productivity? I think maybe i've spent an hour
| at the DMV in the past 10 years. I spend maybe an hour or two
| each year doing my taxes. I struggle to think of a single other
| case where my time is consumed with dealing with any kind of
| bureaucracy. I'm not convinced it's a major problem.
| myroon5 wrote:
| IRS stated the average American spends 13 hours every year
| dealing with tax filing:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-
| checker/post/claim...
| Xeoncross wrote:
| It's great when it works right?
|
| Woe to you people off the golden path.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Isn't that true of every system ever?
| ericmcer wrote:
| You probably fall into that group of people who the
| government loves, just work your W2 job, autopay taxes
| without feeling the real loss of the money and don't raise
| any fuss. If you try to start your own business, hire
| employees or do contract work you will find it is a total
| nightmare.
| IncRnd wrote:
| For each hundred million people, your 1-2 hours pear year is
| 100,000,000 to 200,000,000 hours per year.
| thfuran wrote:
| Okay, but increasing state and federal government staffing
| levels by a few percent to try to save that time would cost
| more than 100,000,000 hours per year.
| Avamander wrote:
| If you want to speed it up with staff, if. The point of
| the article is that you don't have to waste nearly as
| much human time at all, if you have a working electronic
| identity and goverment services.
| thfuran wrote:
| Oh, I thought this was under the comment about
| understaffing, but I see now that it isn't.
| vondur wrote:
| Come to here in SoCAl. It's a few hours to get anything done.
| Avamander wrote:
| An hour or two each year? That's a lot of wasted time.
| Especially if you add it all up across the country.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| 0.02% (i.e. 0.0002) of your waking hours wasted doing taxes
| every year? That really seems like a lot?
| Avamander wrote:
| Yes, because I spend 10 minutes a year.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| So what? I waste far more time every year browsing Hacker
| News than I ever have dealing with government
| bureaucracy. The difference between 0.02% and 0% is
| indistinguishable in reality.
| nixass wrote:
| Waiting for Germany to do this. We'll save few thousand years
| by doing so
| notch656a wrote:
| Where I live private businesses can act as agents of BMV. IT
| creates an economic incentive for productivity and pleasantness
| because the customers are not captive to this business and
| since they are in competition and profit from each license,
| they try to make the process as efficient as possible.
| Meanwhile go to an actual BMV and no fucks are given because
| there is literally no economic incentive to move along nor be
| nice to you.
| efitz wrote:
| Much government interaction in the US (at all levels- federal,
| state, local, court) is ultimately about revenue.
|
| Adopting a single, simple (in terms of complexity) revenue model
| per polity would eliminate much interaction. For example a 20%
| flat income tax with a $25000 deduction would allow the IRS to
| pre-fill your return on a post card. Eliminating "fines as a
| revenue stream" would dramatically reduce local court and LE
| interactions. Reducing permitting, etc.
|
| Not only would the citizen experience improve but we would also
| need less government resources.
|
| Of course, there are reasons why we do all these things, but we
| rarely if ever revisit implemented government programs to see if
| they are meeting their goals and if their cost exceeds their
| benefit.
|
| Given that, I much more support "less government" rather than
| "the same amount of government but most of it online".
| [deleted]
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