- making the digital process more complicated than the paper process, because the software will simplify the complexity (it does until it doesn’t and then everyone involved needs to figure out the real process anyway)
- assuming correctness of the software (all software has bugs, all digital processes eventually get into a broken state, there should be a way to force the system back into an intuitive “right” state better than some dev running random sql statements on a production database)
- assuming correctness of the software’s users (all people make mistakes, and mistakes happen often, there should be a clean and reliable way to force a process into a state matching reality when someone misclicks, but often the only way is to “lie” to the system and take an odd path through it)
- trying to capture the process end to end in software rules causing it to become set in stone (only the labor intensive parts should be automated, leaving room for flexible adaptation of the process without requiring a new software release)
As computers became more widespread, unfortunately some tried to emulate this approach at smaller offices, regardless "progress" was made until computers are everywhere.
Somewhere along the line from the depths of bureaucracy came the saying "To err is human, to really screw things up takes a computer".
And this maxim has been emblazoned on coffee cups for decades now.
It is not nostalgia for paper: technology was applied badly to bureaucracy, widening the divide between the physical, in-person bureaucrat and the person using their service. When things were not digital, at least, it was easy to deal with things in person, talk, get explanations.
In practice, automation just means that we do more work.
This applies to bureaucracies also.
After computers, the rules became far more complex and it seemed no clerk I dealt with actually understood them. Their solution was to lie - to select and misinterpret a few of the actual rules to create a fantasy rule system that made their interactions simple; but also utterly false. Very frustrating, and so far as I can tell, that's how things still are. The police are maybe the worst 'cause they are hard pressed and forced to cut corners (while managing a lot of rules); but it's everywhere.