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Comment by albertopv | Hacker News Reader

Italian bureaucracy is very hard for everyone in Italy, sadly no politician really want to change it, many jobs are at stake.

Public departments don't talk each other so people must transfer data theirself by hand. IT ignorance is a thing: happened to me, courthouse asked paper copy of a document when I provided a signed electronic one I got from Internal Affairs Ministry website because, as far as they told me, they didn't know how to verify its legitimacy.

My former wife stayed at home when pregnant becase of illness caused by pregnancy, but due to complex laws no one knew if it was plain sickness or early motherhood period (they have very different consequences for the job after child birth), but we had to file a request stating the reason to stay at home. Public office people just told us "try something and let's see".

I could go on forever...

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In places where the bureaucracy is bad people find ways around it since nothing is properly enforced. You end up with a corrupt system which doesn't work as advertised and you simply need to learn how to operate within the informalities.

I suspect this is valid in Italy too.

Not only bad people. Everyone has to find ways around it. Even the bureaucrats themselves tell you to ignore the rules and stuff like that.

I think you misread the parent comment: "where the bureaucracy is bad"

ah right my bad, but the observation stays

Note that at least thelocal.dk, the Danish equivalent, is nowhere near representative of the actual country. Hard pass on thelocal.it as any true source

As someone who's casually browsed the local for different countries before, I'm interested if you could expand on how they're not representative? Are there better English language equivalents you know of?

> I'm interested if you could expand on how they're not representative?

This is going to be very hard to explain, but basically imagine when you read something written by a Chinese newspaper about your country, it's just off, like focusing on the wrong issue that isin't really seem as a problem, or interviewing people that aren't really important.

Like this one: https://www.thelocal.dk/20230324/why-are-waste-containers-ov... if you read the Danish sources, it is about work hours yes, but it is really about avoiding traffic in the city at later stages of the day (I picked an article at random)

> Are there better English language equivalents you know of?

with today's AI, I think translating is doing a great job tbh

> Public departments don't talk each other so people must transfer data theirself by hand.

I experienced this first hand when my one of my brother's citizenship documents issued by the Italian consulate was sent to the Udine comune with a wrong/missing electronic signature. We had to call and talk to them, they explicitly told us to talk again with the Italian consulate in Argentina to get things fixed. For about two weeks we were talking to both parties until we fixed the problem in a completely different way. Unbelievable.

I'm an Italian citizen and my wife is American. Getting the necessary paperwork to be married in Rome was a considerable pain. We were dealing with an especially officious dignitary in at the consulate in London.

However something wonderful happened when one of the comune we were dealing with in Italy attempted to frustrate the actions of the consulate bureaucrat. The London official, who had previously been our nemesis, suddenly flipped allegiance, and we were transported effortlessly towards our goal, surfing on a tide of paper-pushing vengeance as she sought to stamp her authority over her counterparts in the provinces.

Hahaha, man I did laugh with this one. Bureaucrats fighting each other!

Yes

And it's even worse if you go to a smaller town wanting to retire

(Naturally you'll have fewer problems if you know someone who knows someone etc...)

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