Haha, I can totally tell from your skepticism to digitalization that you're German and I agree with your take that that's exactly how digitalization is or will be handled in Germany. Per its track record, if there is a way digitalization could make something annoying even worse, then I am 100% confident that Germany will find it and implement it.

While in the UK/NL or Scandinavia digitalization means replacing 20 pieces of paper with one web form, in Germany I totally expect those 20 pieces of paper to be replaced with 1500 emails while also pissing away hundreds of millions of taxpayer Euros in the process to politically connected consultancy firms only to end up with a worse result than when things were paper based. This would be the most typical German government thing ever.

>It's a sort of fake progress that often seems more about workplace control. Everyone messaging you on slack every five minutes isn't going to make you more productive.

Everyone trapping on your shoulder in person every 5 minutes will make you easily just as unproductive or more.

Has it occurred to you in your example that the interruptions are the main problem and not the communication medium?

At least on slack I can disable notifications or close the app. I can't disable my helicopter boss from buzzing me in person.

>It's interesting that in Britain, often hailed as ab example in terms of digitalization, total factor productivity is almost flat for 15 years.

What are you talking about? How's productivity are you referring to? Bureaucracy in Britain is massively simpler than in Germany, both for businesses and for citizens.