Programmers: working tirelessly to create ever more advanced tech for handling information 💻

Governments around the world: oh, the citizens want something from us? They better get ready for PAPERS 📃

The year is 2022, ok¿

In Sweden they actually are going more and more digital so even government post comes as digital, but we have a separate secure inbox we access using a digital id for sensitive documents.

Same digital id used for banking and medical contacts and payments.

No more username/password :)

Yep, same as @Voxera. Slovakia is trying hard to go digital. It's a slow an painful procese but so far we have electronic IDs that I can use with my computer to login to a government system and theres a secure inbox for electronic communication and I can also use the same ID to login to our financial system and do my taxes all from my PC, no paper, no direct communication with real humans until necessary. Even when going to medical leave I no longer need to take papers to the employer, it can all be done electronicaly from the doctors office.

That's what's good, what's bad is that Sometimes the systems fail or randomly stop working and then you need to do it the old way still. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it sucks

Happy to say almost everything in the UK is digital and it works well. Strangely, the last non-digital thing I had to interact with was some example medical trials data - still handwritten.

Unpopular opinon: paper can be quite nice
I do not ever want to see an electronic device at an election

@LotsOfCaffeine

'paper can be quite nice'

For elections I agree, everything else no thanks.

@ElectroArchiver not too sure about that. A disgruntled government employee or a distracted system administrator can cause extremely easily a very devastating leak of millions of people's sensitive data. Think about it: one incompetent or malicious person is all it takes. If things are on paper, what can happen? A briefcase worth of information gets stolen from the archives? So what, 3 people are affected.

@ess3sq Lmao, you should face reality, that has long been the case, things won't revert to paper anyways, so it's not even worth discussing.

Also just look at the idiot that is facing the death penalty for stealing military secrets, he used printed papers, so it's not like they can't be used for significant information.

Just considering the amount of time saved by using digital data instead of printed documents is immense and if done right, can also be rely on less trust into any given system that uses it.

( Not that I think most governments are in either case actually very concerned about lessening the chain of trust, considering they all love spying and know everything they can about their people )

@ess3sq the data is already stored electronically, its just that without the digital ID you have to get it printed.

So a bad apple can already steal it all.

@LotsOfCaffeine I agree fully, and that is still off the table in sweden

You can do your tax using your phone, or take a loan or buy things, pay your bills or medical needs, but not participate in an election. That is still paper envelopes. And that is good.

@ElectroArchiver so the thing is, in the case of the guy who stole NSA secrets, the information was already digital, and he printed it out. Had it not been digital, it would have been in some kind of paper archive. Usually they check what you bring in/out of there, can't carry your phone in so you can't take pictures etc. Obviously that is no longer practicable today as information grows so fast and needs to be searchable, making paper archives way too inefficient. It's still indisputable though that they are more secure: if you want to go in, you have to physically go in, can't do that from behind 45 proxy connections.

*sobs in German*

In Germany we also have a digital ID ("elektronischer Personalausweis" or ePerso), and all offices are required by law offer their services digitally.

Unfortunately, the digital id can be used for some federal agencies, less state offices and no communal services.
Only some banks offer onboarding with the ePerso, must require a video or validation locally (or at a post office). The requirements to directly use the id in your application are astronomical, and service providers charge fees per login.

@sbiewald thats the problem, to get it really useful it should be easy for anyone to use.

Swedish bankid as its called, was created by the banks as the name implies to improve security but was then adopted by more and more sites and services for identification.

Today its everywhere. The only think holding it back is that its still a fee to use, but its not prohibitingly expensive for most companies.

But I think its still out of reach for hobby sites :/

But a while back we got a competitive service called frejaID that is also gaining traction, and you can use a middle man to implement it so you do mot have to bother with any differences.

And thats the key, it must be easy and responsibility cheap to use then you get a broad user base and more will want to use it.