They often try to recreate the paper process with IT, instead of making a complete new setup.
Example:
Previously, you had to go to the City Hall or whatever in your pace of birth to get a birth certificate.
Now you can email them, pay, and they mail you the certificate via snail mail.
How it should be: Use an online token, log into your account, request a birth certificate and just print it. It should have a URL that can be used to verify that it is valid. This would be faster and the risk of forgery would be much lower. A seal - and Germans love seals, they wank of to seals - can be forged much easier.
Lots of decision's, made no sense in software development.
But we must have process and governance in place. Let us set a meeting to discuss.
> Now you can email them, pay, and they mail you the certificate via snail mail.
> How it should be: Use an online token, log into your account, request a birth certificate and just print it. It should have a URL that can be used to verify that it is valid. This would be faster and the risk of forgery would be much lower. A seal - and Germans love seals, they wank of to seals - can be forged much easier.
That's an unreasonably high (or weird) standard. What country has a process like that? Switzerland certainly doesn't.
Even Brazil. Things like Background Check works like this. You can create a PDF that can be online validated.
Western consultancies win contracts to build IT systems. The project is outsourced to India for low cost. Indian outsourcing team hires the cheapest talent possible. Cheap talent provides cheap quality. Website is bloated and slow. Some person on the internet uses these systems, hates it and develops a strong negative bias for all Indian (replace with any 3rd world country) talent.
On the other hand, Indian Govt hires the competent Indians at fair prices. (These aren't even our best or that well paid). It treats them with (moderate) respect and allows them to own their projects. Indian Govt. websites turn out to be seamless, performant and handle 10x the scale of western IT systems. This is a recent phenomenon, but India's digitization of railways, covid management, aadhar, social welfare and UPI has been best in class.
Reminds me of when westerners visit India, eat at the most suspicious looking street food place, and inevitably get sick. You never want your street food (programmers) to be cheaper than the bar set by local middle class (or their taxes). Yeah, outsourcing will save money. But, have some standards.
You get what you pay for.