[postepowanieadm]

There's a strange (for someone from Eastern Europe) zone around public services where shady individual thrive: like buying vignettes - you may buy "directly" from the state (nemzetiutdij.hu, eznamka.sk, edalnice.cz) or by some middleman that brings nothing to the process but has a ~20% commission.

[mathieuh]

In the UK this happens with tax rebates. For the vast majority of people your tax is calculated by HMRC and taken out of your pay and if they make a mistake you just tell them and they will adjust your tax code so you pay less/more tax until it works out.

Some shady companies set themselves up as middlemen and pocket a large proportion of the rebate when you can do it yourself in minutes through an online portal.

[nicbou]

In Germany there is also a strange zone where people bring sanity to government processes that have no business being this complicated.

[magnetometer]

I've never experienced any government process where paying a third party would have simplified things. I've also never heard of any third party offerings for that purpose. Could you share some examples?

[gattilorenz]

Not sure about now, but last year your only way of getting a digital vignette for the Austrian highway that is valid “today” was via a third party (from outside Austria, I think).

Austrian ASFINAG would only sell you one that is valid in ~2 week at the earliest, since that’s the time you are guaranteed by law to return it. Not very handy if you are already on the road, and don’t want to stop to buy a physical vignette.

[magnetometer]

Sorry, should have specified that I'm looking for examples for Germany, as this was what the parent comment was talking about.

[nicbou]

It generally means someone translating your information to the format the government employees expect, because each attempt costs multiple weeks of waiting. Basically, if there is a 6-week response time, you want to get it right on the first try.

In other cases, you pay people to save yourself the hassle of fighting for an appointment slot, and to save a trip across town in the middle of a work day. These fixers become the somewhat digital layer to a famously analog bureaucracy.

[magnetometer]

I've never had this issue with any government communication in Germany. Also, all appointments I need can be booked online, so I never had to pay someone for them (wouldn't even come to my mind). Maybe it's more of an issue for particular cities?

[nicbou]

Is it safe to assume that you were born in Germany? The system is a lot less friendly to newcomers who have to do everything at once. It's full of catch 22 situations.

That aside, Germany is a federation and every state, city, office and employee adds a layer of variance for a given process.

[ricudis]

In Greece, traditionally, we tend to consider Germany as the almost ultimate place in regards to reliability, efficiency, etc. It's a bit soothing to discover that almost everywhere everybody has the same issues (the difference in magnitude matters, of course)

[nicbou]

It's a myth. Germans are methodical and risk-averse, but definitely not efficient. Things to get stuck at the precise point in time when they were over-engineered, and never move from there.

As a result, German bureaucracy tends to rely solely on paper and in-person appointments. With every state, every city, every office and every employee having their own interpretation of a procesd, you get an unpredictable, opaque, drawn out process that drives people mad.

There is a famous Asterix and Obelix scene about an office that drives people mad with bureaucracy. The protagonists are hunting for the Pass A38. This scene is better known in German than in its original French for a reason.

[viridian]

I think its overgeneralizing, but mostly accurate to say that the human-free constructs built by the Germans are quite efficient, but the human processes, systems, and interactions by which they get to these other results are byzantine at best, Kafkaesque at worst.

Perhaps the two are even related. American companies will reach 3 9's of reliability for a device, call it sufficient, and ship a product. German companies will be engaged with not only internal stakeholders, but also various levels of government for weeks to months just to come to an agreement about what the acceptable threshold is (it's the highest asked for by the combined pool of stakeholders), and 18 months after the Americans hit the market, you'll have a wristwatch with 7 9's of reliability that costs 3x as much as the American one.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Actually we have(or had?) another, more common wording for that sort of bureaucraZy:

Schreibtischpingpong where you are the ball being table tennised from desk to desk :)

I never heard 'Büroflipper', which comes to mind when thinking about this. Being the ball in a pin ball machine.

Probably because it's too fast, compared to the latencies in real life. But that would apply to Schreibtischpingpong, too.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Don't axe the FAX, it's holy.

But fear not, its last disciples will die out soon.

By then we'll be fully digital, hold in check by Electrons bloated thrall, solely.

What a boon.

[Schweigerose]

These times are long gone. Not only with government efficiency, but the transition to digital services, railroad services, you name it. And yet people voted for a 68 year old Blackrock manager without any kind of governmental expertise on any level as their new saviour.

[BobaFloutist]

Yeah these days the masters of officiencynard probably Japan.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Panasonic, so iconic.

For offcice equipment, like fax, phones, copiers, printers...

They were everywhere, around 2000.

[pnt12]

Nowadays that's actually Switzerland (at least I hear great things about Zurich, except the cost of living).

[deruta]

I've, in turn, heard much praise for how Estonia is doing it.

[microtonal]

efficiency

Having lived in Germany for five years, this is a total myth. The German administration is a tire fire, I mean a filing cabinet fire. First lesson is: learn to wait. Have to do things at the municipality or the Finanzamt? Prepare to reserve 1-2 hours of your day, because you will have to wait a lot. And then the administration is pretty chaotic because (for historical reasons) they do not want to link administrations. Then they do random things like accidentally changing your and your partner's tax brackets in the middle of the year. My wife (who is German) chased them until they would fix it and they had no clue how it happened. Other foreign colleagues often had similar issues.

The same is true by the way with non-government stuff like medical care. Have an appointment with your GP or a medical specialist? Great, the appointment only means that you have to be there at a certain time. They will let you wait an hour or two without any remorse (what's the point of an appointment)?

Nothing is efficient in Germany. Reliability is also a meme at this point. Even 10 years ago, about 1/4-1/2 of the ICE trains I took would have a serious delay (which usually ended being a 2-3 hour delay if you have to cross a border). We just came back from vacation in Germany (it continues to be a beautiful country with nice people) with our electric car. The charging infrastructure is deplorable. Not only they have only a small number of chargers available (even a lot of highway stops only have two chargers), so impossible to charge on a busy day. But not only that, a lot of chargers are broken and nobody really cares for fixing them.

Sorry for the rant. tl;dr: Germany is not efficient and not reliable.

[gambiting]

My favourite anecdote regarding German EV chargers - I was trying to charge at a motorway stop couple years back, and the stupid charger needs an app, ok, got the app. And it's even in English, success! But.....when I try to add a payment card it says the billing address has to be in Germany. Ok, I'm determined so I ring their helpline.....only to be told it's open Monday to Saturday 9am till 4pm(it was Sunday).

Honestly never seen this issue in any other EU country.

[marcus_holmes]

This. German bureaucracy is a nightmare, especially if German is not your first language.

German health system is a mess, but mainly because Germans are (probably rightly) suspicious of having electronic health records.

[robert_foss]

Very true, if only more sanity was brought.

[nicbou]

I'm doing my best! I think I have made Berlin's bureaucracy a lot more approachable, but there's only so much you can do as a single person without official backing.

Or if spun around, it's incredible what can be done by a single motivated person, and sad that the entire bureaucratic apparatus is incapable of doing it.

[postepowanieadm]

Germany is special.

[qweiopqweiop]

In Spain it's the same thing but for appointments for government services.