- HMRC
- Council tax
- NI number
- Local doctor
- Voter registration
Never mind that even doing all that, most companies still don't think you exist because you don't appear on credit checks. Granted, most of these can be done via mail (someone should really introduce the British public service to the interwebs one of these days), the bureaucracy in Berlin is hardly uniquely bad from a British perspective :)
I think the key here is not web/non-web but the government in question having an intelligent, joined-up registration system.
In the case of Finland, once I'd registered with the tax office my address and other details should have been registered in the system. KELA would be notified - along with all my income details - and the magistrate and police would have up-to-date records. Done, one visit to one office.
All these different agencies have their own databases (with slightly different fields making transfer of data between them a bit tricky) and they're not allowed to communicate apart from a few limited examples.
To get anything done I need to fill out a form, on paper. That same information needs to be filled out across many different forms, to different agencies. It's so bad that sometimes one form asks for the same information (address, date of birth) twice.
I'm not sure how governments could kludge all that data into one big database and protect people from hideous privacy violations that result.
"You can do it online!" say the commercials.
Yes, you can fill in a form online, you're then presented with a PDF that you have to print off, sign, and post back to the local council office. Huh?