Comment by brnt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brnt | Hacker News Reader

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I've worked in both, plus the Netherlands. France has one forgiving element: usually some room for the human element. Germans civil servants seem happy to apply rules and procedures, even if they are clearly suboptimal. French civil servants would agree it's ridiculous and are more inclined to help you get unstuck if you can show them that you are.

France also seemed further along digitizing things.

Total duration is probably still a tie: it's all over the map but things can take ages in either country.

The Netherlands is great, except when it isn't. If you ever get stuck there, you have no chance convincing anyone. Their believe they have the best (civil) service doesn't help, but it turns out its all highly optimized for 'normal' Dutch citizens. As soon as your deviations from that norm start to add up, you're going to run into unhandled edge cases, which people won't handle (no protocol, and they are not used to using their own brain). "Computer says no" is Dutch (civil) service in a nutshell.

The digitization in france in making things worse on the edge though, the system are buggy and now you no longer have that human you can talk to fix things.

I remember not being able to create an account because the website password validation regex was buggy, I wrote an email about it and it's probably still not fixed. I've had to read the "compiled" js of the website to understand what was wrong to begin with.

I've had administrative processes slightly deviate from the happy path and getting stuck. When you talk to a human now. it's sorry can't do anything it's all online even when you explain that yes you tried other possible contact channels phone,email,in person, etc (email seems to go to /dev/null or get a canned response that clearly didn't read your message).

"Computer says no" is more and more of a thing now here in france. it's faster when you on the common happy path but if you aren't you better pray. Also the different services still seem unable to talk to each other even when they are in the same building / same administration but different department. Hopefully they'll improve that in 20 years.

At the very least I'm happy I can still see my pension was registered correctly and downloads the attestations to that effect. All without visiting an office in Paris only open on Thursdays 10:00-10:30am ;)

My family and I are Irish citizens and while the Netherlands has been good to us, it is surprising to me that when we go to the hospital you have to check in with a specifically Dutch ID. In the name of the person with the appointment. That seems OK since I have a Dutch driver's licence, but my 4 year old daughter does not, and they seemed to have no idea what to do with her. Usually we figure it out but there's not even a check in desk so I end up bumbling around asking random staff members.

Wow. I’ve never had to show ID at Dutch hospitals or clinics. My GP does the referral (!!! great GP!!!) or I turn up at A&E and the (medical) intake has begun. I speak Dutch though, maybe that makes a difference?

Edit:spelling and clarification on intake

In many (?) hospitals, you need to take your ticket somehow when you enter. You can sometimes do this with the letter or email you got, but you can also scan a (Dutch) ID. See 'aanmeldzuil': https://www.zuyderland.nl/ziekenhuis/afspraken/aanmelden/

It's mandatory if you've never been to the hospital/clinic before, it's for insurance purposes. See https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/identificatieplicht...

tergooi MC in Hilversum has no one to talk to when you walk in, really. You get a ticket with your Dutch id, wait where it tells you, and someone calls your name. It's really efficient if you have Dutch id!

At least when I was there last year, if you head left from the entrance there's a couple booths there. Usually at least one is staffed.

Also if I remember at Tergooi MC you needed to register in their system anyways before an appointment. In the past they issued a little plastic card at the very same booth.

Thanks! I called them last week and they told me I couldn't do anything without a specifically Dutch ID. ISTR seeing booths with no staff in the past, I will look again next time.

It could be they were referring to DigiD for logging into their online portal. I recall needing to use it to schedule an appointment with a specialist.

Inside the hospital itself you should be fine with an EU ID card or a passport, I don't think they specifically need a Dutch ID.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Also, even though my partner has a Dutch tax ID, we still can't file together ourselves, on account of her not having a Dutch ID, and therefore not being able to setup DigiD 'correctly'. We can have a tax consultant do it for us however!

Highly optimized for the happy path, which of course does cover 99% of cases, but you better not be in the 1% :) That's what I liked about France: nobody expects you to be normal, so everybody is used to working around systems. For the Dutch (and Germans), systems are sacred, and if they don't work, it must be you!

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