[hornbill]

Estonia’s success is not so much about ditching legacy technology as it is about shedding “legacy thinking”

This is the key. I think many people does not understand this or does not approve of this. By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever.

[johnchristopher]

> By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever.

what's your point ? Ditching the process of having a government ?

[Kaali]

It seems that usually when moving from paper to digital forms, the original form is just reimplemented to be filled out on a computer. Where rethinking the actual process might actually reduce the actual interaction that is required from a person, to an automated system which can induce information that would otherwise be filled manually.

In Finland when filling your tax forms online, the form comes prefilled with numbers that are calculated from your tax info of the previous year. If there are no changes in your salary or benefits, you can just agree to the the form and it is done, without typing out anything.

[s_kilk]

I've seen this first-hand. All they want is the same paper workflow they had before, but with less paper, even if the old workflow is bloated and/or nonsensical.

Edit: A colleague phrased this brilliantly before: "We have these machines that can do literally anything we want them to, and instead we're using them as a poor imitation of paper"

[kybernetyk]

>It seems that usually when moving from paper to digital forms, the original form is just reimplemented to be filled out on a computer.

In Germany as a business owner I'm required to file taxes electronically. But then in the last step I still have to print out some of forms and send them via snail mail to the German tax office.

And don't get me started about registering a new company. It takes weeks and you need to visit a notary. (Coincidentally last week I created a UK Ltd to hold some intellectual property. It took 20 minutes and I paid the fee via PayPal. And the next day everything was ready to go.)

There are really different school of thoughts when it comes to administration. And you can't just slap an electronic form ontop of an over-regulated dinosaur and automagically become a modern & agile institution.

[mvanvoorden]

This is probably because they haven't found a way yet to put a stamp on a digital form ;)

[tomjen3]

Really? Scammers could do that ten years ago.

I assumed Germany was more organized than that.

[cuu508]

Yes. In ideal world, for example, founding a run-of-the-mill company could be as simple as spinning up a DO box or creating Paypal account. Set up billing and contact details, check a few options, click and done.

In reality, even with e-signatures and what not it's far from that. You submit multiple documents to multiple government offices, processing takes days, and there is plenty of printing, mailing and scanning going on behind the scenes.

Problem is, governments have little incentive to improve UX, as they face no competition. You either put up with the bureaucracy and stupid big forms, or... well, there's no other option.

[hantusk]

I think hornbill is just stating his key takeaway from the article: Rethinking processes from the ground-up digitally is much better than translating legacy processes.

[johnchristopher]

Ah, I see ! I agree with that outlook, I misinterpreted his phrasing.

[agumonkey]

True but it's a first step. They don't master the technology, once they use it, what should and can be 'refactored' will probably be. Right now they're still thinking through their last medium.

Saw this for national websites (tax, jobs), first version was heavy Java front and backend, complex, slow, full of requirements. Recently it was simplified (a little, sometimes a lot).