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Comment by airza | Hacker News Reader

The dutch government's SSO app is a complete pleasure to use for this- I hope they use it as a model for everything else.

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That would mean getting the German government on board. And their track record around these things has been less than stellar, to put it mildly. They always find a way to add wrinkles and complications that make initiatives such as this one pretty much useless in the end.

I think the problem many people miss in this context is that it's not a bureaucracy or a technology problem — it's a cultural one. There's a reason cash is king in countries like Germany and Switzerland. As someone who lived in the latter as an expat for a while, they often simply prefer the option you can physically hold. Trust is the name of the game, and I think the cultural bridge will need to be crossed first before adoption becomes the norm.

> There's a reason cash is king in countries like Germany and Switzerland. As someone who lived in the latter as an expat for a while, they often simply prefer the option you can physically hold.

It might also be cheaper to use cash, given banking isn't typically free in Germany.

I'm not sure why you're trying to say here. Pretty much every German and most definitely every merchant has a bank account. Personally I've never had an account that wasn't free either, although some banks are changing this in light of the low/negative interest rates.

I don't agree with this analogy. Most Germans I know (especially those who like cash) are not against the existence of electronic payment at all, but about the choice to have both ways. It's mostly lamenting that you still can ONLY pay in cash in so many places. (Covid has actually improved the situation at a lot of places.)

I have nothing good to say about digital services in Germany. At best, you get a digital version of the old paper form.

UK expat in NL (3 years). Concur wholeheartedly. The Dutch have nailed their SSO app (DigiD) - this is the model to copy.

It eliminates a multitude of steps (sign up, proof of identity, credential management) to accessing any government service from booking COVID tests to paying taxes.

While it is pretty nice, I like Estonia's model even more. Achieves all the same things but requires fewer steps, all the while supporting multiple modes of logging in (with your phone, with a card reader, etc).

This is a joke, right?

Although I wouldn't be surprised if the prolonged use of the DigID app (i.e. because it keeps crashing, or is offline for maintenance again) would have caused maniacal insanity.

Edit: The app works most of the time, but it is very unstable and not at all user friendly. No QR-code scanning feature but manual code input only, no login confirmation, no active session management or insight, most services allow you to log in with just your username/password and don't require the app at all, etc.

I have honestly no complaints about digID. I don't use it much but when I do it just works.

But to call it "a complete pleasure to use"?

I mean, I feel like the main requirement of it needing to be secure is basically incompatible with pleasure. I think it is about as pleasurable it can be.

It definitely has a QR-code scanning feature, I used it about half an hour ago to log in to a couple of things.

Not on Android DigiD app version 5.18.1 (822), I just checked. The "koppelcode" can only be copied manually.

I guess i can understand wanting a second QR code instead of the 4 character koppelcode, but it seems hard for me to say that it's difficult or time-consuming to enter it.

ah, the koppelcode needs to be manually entered, but then the next step is to scan a QR-code (Android, latest app version, but it's been like that for a long time afaik)

I do wonder why that code has to be manual and not embedded into the QR code, I assume there's some reason for it. But it's also only four letters, not terribly tedious.

On the other hand eHerkenning is a joke. SMS-based 2FA...

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