>> "High quality internet services" are you kidding me?!
I was mostly referring to government websites, online banking, retirement accounts, etc... For example, in Germany, a lot of stuff is still done by paper mail. I've lived in other countries which had web portals but they were often terrible and didn't work properly.
It's only after living outside of Australia for a few years that I understood how smooth all the processes related to the government were over there. In Europe, to get anything done (like to get a national ID card), you have to run around to all sorts of different agencies to collect different paper documents and forms which depend on each other and nobody explicitly tells you what order you're supposed to get them in... It's only when you physically go to one agency that they then ask you to fill out a Form1234 and Form5678 which you were supposed to get from two different government agencies...
As an example, in Australia, to prove my identity, they had a score system so I could bring in different documents like a bank credit card, driver's licence and a passport and they would add up all the scores and it had to exceed a threshold. That was convenient. In Europe, to do some administrative procedure, they may often ask you for a specific document like a certified copy of your birth certificate which is less than 3 months old to prove your identity; it doesn't matter that you have a passport, a credit card, a driver's license, bank statements, a national ID card; they only want to see the birth certificate, there is no flexibility in the process and it's easy to get stuck; and if you do, it takes ages to resolve.
Ah, sorry I misunderstood. I totally agree with you, I live in Germany so I know perfectly well how superior the ATO and MyGov services are compared to my local Finanzamt
I was mostly referring to government websites, online banking, retirement accounts, etc... For example, in Germany, a lot of stuff is still done by paper mail. I've lived in other countries which had web portals but they were often terrible and didn't work properly.
It's only after living outside of Australia for a few years that I understood how smooth all the processes related to the government were over there. In Europe, to get anything done (like to get a national ID card), you have to run around to all sorts of different agencies to collect different paper documents and forms which depend on each other and nobody explicitly tells you what order you're supposed to get them in... It's only when you physically go to one agency that they then ask you to fill out a Form1234 and Form5678 which you were supposed to get from two different government agencies...
As an example, in Australia, to prove my identity, they had a score system so I could bring in different documents like a bank credit card, driver's licence and a passport and they would add up all the scores and it had to exceed a threshold. That was convenient. In Europe, to do some administrative procedure, they may often ask you for a specific document like a certified copy of your birth certificate which is less than 3 months old to prove your identity; it doesn't matter that you have a passport, a credit card, a driver's license, bank statements, a national ID card; they only want to see the birth certificate, there is no flexibility in the process and it's easy to get stuck; and if you do, it takes ages to resolve.