zlacker

>>nicbou+(OP)
No, no, it's all wrong.

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.

>>271605+i8
Yet for some reason Europeans feel so strongly against privitization of public services

>>brap+Ia
Most of these shitty online services are already run by private consulting companies that burn your tax money.

>>nisa+8d
You’re right, but this is not what I mean by privatizing.

In this scenario you described, the government has a monopoly and you as a citizen don’t get to opt-out or switch to the competition. You will pay for whatever garbage service they provide you with, unless you want to go to jail.

There are no consequences to wasting your tax money. These private consulting companies are just the means to waste it.

>>brap+xI
Government tends to do what only government can do (e.g. issue passports, driving licenses, file taxes, etc.), and things where natural monopolies exist (water supply, trains, roads).

What exactly would you privatise? (read: hand over obscene profits to a rent-seeking private entity).

>>johnet+UD1
In the various libertarian ideologies there is the idea that only thing that government needs to do is to “notarize” contracts. This is on the first approximation true, but said government needs to somehow derive the authority to do so. That authority comes from government's ability to somehow disperse violence, which in itself requires quite extensive support infrastructure needed for the government to function. And when such infrastructure has to exist anyway, somehow providing access to it for the citizens is a good idea both politically and economically.

Another function of government is, like it or not, in somehow providing legal tender and in the process regulating it. Efficient free markets need fiat medium of exchange, however counterintuitive that might seen. Because otherwise the trading parties would not have any common value reference, and sooner or later the market itself will create something akin to a government and state. Which is well, probably how the idea of governments and states started some thousands of years ago.