this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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That is probably because of two reasons.
First, Germany has a reputation for overboarding bureaucracy and a bloated administrative machinery in all parts of life. "Passierschein A38" isn't a running gag for nothing. Digitalization well done could trim this by a lot and make a lot of administrative errands more accessible to everyone.
Second, the term "digitalization" itself is a buzzword that can mean everything and nothing and everyone has their own conception of it, so you can easily demand more digitalization and have everyone on your side.
Here again, digitalization can mean everything and nothing. I am an IT person, this would not really be digitalization for me. There is a familiar quotation, „Wenn du einen Scheißprozess digitalisierst, hast du am Ende einen digitalen Scheißprozess“, meaning when you digitalize a bullshit process, you have a digital bullshit process. That's why to me and many of my colleagues it is important to always review any given process and see if you can't improve on the process itself.
If you think Bureaucracy from Government is bad then don't look into hospitals. At one internship I've nearly got a stroke when I saw that they were filling out a PDF on a Computer, copying manually all the files from the Hospital Information System, printing it out, then faxing it internally to the person in charge of scheduling surgerys who copied then all the information back to the Hospital Information System
Yeah, I know. That's why I didn't specify the government but kept it general.
Yes, this!
Cutting down bureaucracy must first and foremost start by streamlining processes.
Unfortunately most efforts only consist of throwing in a computer into an already unnecessarily convoluted process or just abolishing sensible regulations.
Incidently the A38 is from a French movie playing in ancient Rome. Digitalization will not resolve the issues of bureaucracy as the mindset is not changed. I have working experience in public entities. Even the ones that haven't seen a fax in the past decade the processes are slow ineffiecient and everyone hides from taking responsibility and making decisions like cockroaches, when the light is turned on.
I believe the mediocre digitalization to be a symptom of our cultural problems in Germany, not the other way around. And adressing those cultural problems becomes ever more difficult, as the older generations become more and more dominant in politics and businesses.