Hacker News Reader

Comment by moooo99 | Hacker News Reader

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

View on HN

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 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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com