[ChuckNorris89]

This reminds me of the way you fill in an online form in Germany: You go to the online form, print it out, fill it in, then either fax it, send it by post or put it in the institutions mailbox in person.

Or how some gyms required the membership cancellation be done by post during the 2020 lockdowns.

Paper based bureaucracy in Germany is an exhaustive tradition that has survived the internet age and seems is not going away anytime soon.

[_trampeltier]

Hotel registration just on paper, because, in a case, the police can take fingerprints an dna on the paper.

https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article191846877/Hotelanmeldu...

Doch die Hotels dürfen nicht, und daran sind die Sicherheitsbehörden schuld, vertreten durch Bundesinnenminister Horst Seehofer (CSU). Die Ermittler wollen die Möglichkeit haben, über Fingerabdrücke und DNA-Spuren auf dem Meldezettel, Bösewichten auf die Spur zu kommen. „Das klingt wie ein Aprilscherz“, sagt Hotelsprecher Luthe, „ist aber keiner.“

[andrew_eit]

This reminds me of the most amazingly archaic interaction I had with the Finance Ministry.

They notified me by post that I needed to provide them with some information on their online tool. Here was the process: 1) Go to link, fill in form with personal detailed. Print, sign and post. 2) Receive a login password via post after 1-2 weeks 3) Login and do the the thing they asked.

Honestly why bother with an online system, just send me the form and I'll send it back. Done.

Also, applying to universities here also involves sending NOTARISED copies of all your documents, via post, along with the application. I don't think I've ever in my life applied to university by sending a thick brown envelope.

[nybble41]

That reminds me of the signup process for the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS), which is used for things like estimated tax payments in the US. It's not quite as bad since you don't actually need to print & post the form, but they do insist on snail-mailing a code you need to complete the signup process, so registration takes much longer than necessary. All this to set up an account so that you can pay them!

The reasoning is probably the same in both cases: They want to know that you can receive mail at the given address. There are faster ways to confirm that, though, such as uploading an image of a recent utility bill in your name.

[andrew_eit]

Exactly!

And the irony (for me at least) is, that corruption and fraud is still rampant in Germany (e.g. during corona, tons of fake PCR tests being billed to govt. Pharmacies issuing fake vaccine certificates).

This solves nothing.

[t0suj4]

They don't need to improve their registration system. The government simply locks you up if you give up in the process. They don't risk anything if you fail to register.

[embik]

I think there’s a distinction necessary for institutions and private businesses here. Private businesses implement paper-based cancellations to make it harder for people to cancel, not because they‘re bureaucratic per se.

[helloguillecl]

I'd fall into this explanation if I didn't need to post yesterday a sign-up form for my daughter's school.

[k4rli]

Living in Estonia, I feel like we really take the extent of our online services for granted. Literally no need to fill out any papers for anything ever.

Besides that, all of our policies and national decisions are still heavily influenced by Germany like most EU countries.

[piaste]

Living in Italy, not nearly as advanced as Estonia, but still:

Yesterday I got an alert that I was on the last day to file my taxes (if I didn't want to pay a €25 late-filing fee). On my lunch break I SSO'd into the tax agency website, which showed me a pre-compiled form with all the mortgage payments and medical expenses I'd made during the year already deducted, plus a house renovation expense that was registered but not automatically deducted because the system couldn't automatically determine if it qualified. I didn't have to insert any data, except for updating my email address as it still had my old GMail one. I saved it and submitted the tax form as-is, just in case.

Later that evening, I googled around a bit and determined that the renovation work did indeed qualify for the deduction. I reopened the website, clicked on 'Submit Corrective Tax Form' and entered the expense amount. I needed to provide the cadastral reference IDs for the renovated building/s, so I opened my tax agency home page -> Cadastral Query and copy-pasted them from it. Five minutes later I had submitted the second tax form and had two copies in my inbox: one in PDF, and one in RPF (its native columnar file format, in case I wanted to edit it later with a Java desktop application).

Here's the thing, though:

As little as five years ago, all of that would have required me to personally keep a bunch of paper trails and most likely professional help. "Cadastral query" was a by-word for "ponderous bureaucratic mess" and the practical advice was to start filing your taxes at least a couple months in advance.

However, once public-services SSO ("SPID") was introduced in 2015, it enabled a cascade of formerly in-person services to go full digital relatively quickly, because the most critical hard part - authn/authz - was solved. I think Germany should be perfectly able to shake off its dead-tree culture if it clears the same hurdle.

[N19PEDL2]

As an Italian who has been living in Germany for two years, I can confirm what you wrote about the good quality level of e-government our public services have achieved in the last few years.

I report two examples here. When I moved to Germany two years ago, I was able to register in the official list of Italians living abroad ("AIRE") and to cancel my previous residence in Italy just by using "SPID" SSO on the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Moreover, last week I was able to pay my parents' Italian car tax through an app on my smartphone.

On the contrary, last month I had to extend my driving license and I decided to get a German one. I've been told at the Driving Licence Department that I need to provide a document to show what country I come from ("Initial entry registration in the Federal Republic of Germany"). There was no way to provide such document other than going to the town hall of the first place where I lived after arriving in Germany two years ago, asking for such document, getting the paper copy after paying, and bringing it to the town hall of the city where I currently live. The trip only took about an hour, but I wonder how I could have done if I lived on the other side of Germany.

The funny thing is that my friends in Italy think that I moved to a super efficient country where everything is the top of innovation and digital technology (classic German stereotype among Italians) while none of this is possible in Italy and queuing at some public office is the only way to get these services done.

[LeonidasXIV]

I used to live in Germany and the letters I still get are nearly 80% from Germany. My local government just does things online and never bothers me with paper. It is quite amusing if it weren't this sad.

I wanted to vote in German elections but that requires me sending 2(!) letters because for some reason web forms don't exist.

[nix23]

>print it out, fill it in, then fax it

That's how you open new User accounts (Active Directory) in one of the biggest insurance company's in Germany (from Local-IT to HQ-IT) ;)

[hef19898]

That reminds me of a story I heard about the Bundeswehr from a colleague, and former officer, once. Apparently the Bundeswehr is still keeping typewriters in depots in case that during war electronics and computers fail. Not sure how that is supposed to actually work so.

[eecc]

Well, that’s not such a stupid move, a nuke will permanently destroy every electronic device in a large radius.

A better one would to maintain working platforms based on old, rad hardened devices.

[pflanze]

> a nuke will permanently destroy every electronic device in a large radius

The electromagnetic pulse (EMP) produced by nuclear weapons detonated above the atmosphere [1] is destroying many electronic devices in a large radius. "Every" seems too strong of a statement, though, a majority of devices which are small and not connected to wires may survive. The problem though is that even just destroying a large part of devices is enough to disrupt food and water sources and transportation capabilities in a wide area. EMP, while radiation, is not ionizing radiation--its frequencies are below a few 100 MHz. It damages electric and electronic equipment by voltage surges produced in (longer) wires attached to the devices.

> old, rad hardened devices

Radiation hardening [2] is referring to protection from ionizing radiation. While nuclear weapons of course produce lots of that (and it is what is then partially converted to the EMP when it hits the atmosphere), it is of somewhat more localized (~tens of kilometers rather than thousands from the point of detonation), and it appears, secondary concern. Ionizing radiation affects humans and devices similarly. Radiation hardening for devices presumably only makes sense if humans are protected, too, lest they can't use the equipment anymore. During my research I ran across "systems-generated EMP effects", though, which may be an exception (an amount of ionizing radiation low enough to not kill or damage humans much, but high-densitiy enough due to the short duration to destroy electronics). Maybe you were referring to this, I don't know. It seems that EMP protection is more important, though, especially considering that the context here was writing documents, which is probably not a priority if surviving the nearby low-altitude nuclear detonation that's necessary to produce systems-generated EMP effects?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening#Systems-ge...

[hef19898]

Sure. Bad thing is that all relevant records are digital, there a re no off-line copies to work from. Nor are the processes in place to operate purely analog. And what paper documents are there are in such bad shape that they are one of the reasons planes aren't airworthy, tanks aren't driving and subs aren't diving.

Not to mention that electronics in the military are usually hardened anyway.