Here's how we digitize our administration in Germany the proper, Germanic way:
A fixed sum for digitization is allocated and the local government publicly advertises a project. A bureaucrat higher up the foodchain has a friend/cousin/former colleague who runs an IT service business side gig. Guess who will win the contract. The friend/cousin/former colleague starts building by outsourcing the project to some sweatshop. The project will exceed its initially planned costs and timeline by a factor of two or more. Once completed, the final product will consist of a clunky frontend allowing the user to fill a form. After the user has completed the form, it will be distributed via e-mail to the low-level clerks. They will print it out and process it by typing the very same information into another software running on their work computers. Print again. Then the user has to schedule an appointment at the local administrative office to get the form signed and stamped in person. Upon completion, the finalized form will be faxed to the next administrative authority in the chain.
The frontend runs on a Raspberry Pi located somewhere in the administrative building. That server will of course be turned off when all administrators have left the building (save energy!), meaning the frontend will only be available during weekdays from 8 am to 1 pm.
The two organizations in France who specialize in this are the ministry of health and education.
For health we have incompatible backend systems for a start.
Then there was a large project to digitalize the patient files. Millions of euros flew in, an atrocity was born, nobody used it.
After a few years, a brand new project was recreated, millions flew in and another abomination was born. I asked today at the pharmacy if I can use the digitalized version of my prescription (read: a picture I zm invited to take from within the app) and after a moment of reflection to understand what I was asking for they said absolutely not and that the app is crap, completely useless for health. My MD said the same.
I am waiting for the next project and will try to get it, I have a raspberry pi I do not use.
Education. We have platforms for regions that brings exactly nothing (nobody know what it is for) and in this you have an unrelated application with the actual information from school. It comes from a private company which is comfortably installed in the ministry so they provide the same shitty application every year. The "platform" I mentioned earlier was announced as collaborative and whatnot, yet it crashed on the first day of COVID lockout despite not providing any functionality, but blocking everything else.
Ah, our taxes system traditionally crashes the day before the deadline.
Ah, our gov't decided to digitalize our identity papers. 10 years after other countries in Europe (I saw the Polish system which is great). But wait! You expected that you could actually use this to identify yourself? Hahahahahah... Sorry. It is explitely stated that the app will not be used for identification purposes. So what the fuck is it expected to be used for?
I am angry because despite my utter love for my country, anything related to digitalization is run by complete idiots who have no idea about what a computer is.
I would love to be proven wrong by an application that works so that my patriotism can revive.