This is really spot on. I find myself helping a lot of friends and acquaintances with digital bureaucracy, and it is so counterintuitive. I, as a person who is used to buggy software and weird, complex rules, manage somehow to move through that, but I am always under the impression that the rules are applied in a way that actively (and sometimes, I suspect, intentionally) disincentivizes participation/use of a service.

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.