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Comment by AlexanderDhoore | Hacker News Reader

In Belgium, every citizen has access to a "digital vault" provided by the government, which is accessible using their ID card. Individuals can upload up to 1GB of documents into this vault. It's a well-designed system that ensures privacy during one's lifetime, but you can choose what happens with it after your passing.

https://www.izimi.be/en/

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In Germany we have government entities that are unable/refusing to accept anything but Mail in forms or fax as an official communication channel :/

I’m jealous over countries that have such well designed systems in place to make things easy for their citizens

In Germany, the government entities also rarely, if ever, communicate with each other. I'm offered a citizenship and while I'm extremely grateful and even considering the fact that Germany is the country I love the most by a huge margin, I couldn't bring myself to start gathering the documents they need from various government offices. It's been many years, I wonder if I'll get on with it sometime in the future.

I can’t even start to imagine the annoyance that people have to go trough when they need something really important, like a citizenship or a visa.

I haven’t had to deal with that bureaucratic processes, but if I extrapolate the awful experiences I had with something as simple as a new ID, I can fully understand why people hate this kind of organization.

I'm dealing with a bureaucracy which is literally asking me to essentially document every place I've lived and every place I've worked for the last 30+ years. Not only that, but they require paper documents with paper Apostilles affixed and everything notarized. Even if it were possible, it would cost many thousands of dollars in documents and travel fees. In practice, it's essentially impossible because some employers no longer exist, others don't provide paper documents, etc.

Is that for a citizenship application? I’ve moved to Germany around 1.5 years ago and quite excited about the perspective of relatively easy and fast citizenship, but the process you’re describing is insane, I won’t be able to get paper docs from many of my employers.

It’s a massive pain and people regularly leave the country due to unbearable bureaucratic delays.

In Berlin it’s literally impossible to apply. They stopped accepting applications while waiting for the central processing location to open. You must force your application through with a lawyer. There is a backlog of 30,000 applications. They plan to process less 20,000 in a year if all goes well. It will not go well according to the latest report. Oh and they are about to reduce the citizenship requirements, but have no plan for dealing with the extra workload. Everything is still paper based.

I decided not to become a German citizen. I want no liabilities to this country.

> I decided not to become a German citizen. I want no liabilities to this country.

Sad considering the desperate need for people working in a variety of specialized professions, but a completely understandable reaction. Unfortunately, I don't see a realistic future where this is any better.

Same. I was unaware that Belgium or India have such systems and often wished for them to exist in Germany, but thought that it was impossible for privacy reasons in the EU. Now it's clear that it's just incompetence or lack of funds or vision in Germany.

„Datenschutz“ (data protection) is an extremely popular excuse for any failing digital project, in reality, it’s probably a mix between complete incompetence (see digital drivers license), a lack of funds (look at smaller cities/towns) and and lack of capable employees with It backgrounds.

Looking at the situation here it’s really damming that Germany not only has essentially no digital processes implemented, the people in charge seem to are even lacking something as fundamental as a coherent vision how it should work at some point. That the current coalition also decided to essentially cut funds for digitalization projects isn’t making the issue any better

In Denmark we have e-boks and mit.dk which offer much the same service.

On top of that, every official document, from birth certifica, loans, drivers license, health insurance, and everything else is stored in government databases and can usually be accessed from there, provided your national single sign-on solution, MitID, works.

Similar service is available in India : see digilocker https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiLocker

> It's a well-designed system that ensures privacy during one's lifetime

So is a filing cabinet or safe, ideas that have worked well for 1000s of years. If you really need a digital backup, throw the documents on a $10 flash drive, maybe have two copies of that.

I guess I'm cynical because governments and institutions get hacked all the time.

I had/have filing cabinets. The problem is that over the years they grew into collections of multiple paper boxes with poor indexing and scattered contents (i.e., some docs in a series in one box, other docs in a series in another box). And then I moved again and again for various reasons. And then I ended up living abroad in places where it wasn't easy to bring all the boxes along. It's been a tricky balance :)

India has a similar offering called DigiLocker - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiLocker

A legal and secure dead man's switch?

As an American, this is hilarious. The american people would riot in the street over something like this

Some Americans would. Those of us who want the US government to do an excellent job of taking care of the people in the USA (not just citizens) might be inclined to support such a centralized system for storing important personal information. I'm more collectivist after witnessing how the USA handled/handles COVID-19. I wear masks not just to protect myself, but also other people far removed.

I assume you mean that many Americans would consider this overreach by the government.

Are you able to pay to increase your storage amount?

Interesting. TIL

Indeed. Government-provided digital services can be a good experience. There is a lot of initiative in the US to improve the sprawling and incoherent experience. As an example, on the IRS website you can access your personal information (returns, all submitted tax info from various sources) going back for several years. As far as I'm aware this is a newer service.

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