Inadequate digital systems are collapsing under the weight of demand as official business has been forced online during lockdown
and her fiancé James, covid-19 could not have come at a worse time. The couple planned to marry in May and to move from London to Salisbury, a small English city whose cathedral impresses Russian tourists. In July they had a baby, their first. The wedding has been postponed indefinitely. Moving house during lockdown was surprisingly straightforward. But having the child proved a nightmare of bureaucracy.
Neither health care nor Britain is unique in relying heavily on paper. By preventing face-to-face meetings and closing the offices where bureaucrats shuffle documents, the pandemic has revealed how big a problem that is. In many countries, it has been impossible to get a court hearing, a passport or get married while locked down, since they all still require face-to-face interactions. Registering a business has been slower or impossible. Elections are a worrying prospect.
Some applications cannot be delayed. As Florida was locking down, huge queues formed outside government offices to get the paper forms needed to sign up for unemployment insurance. In theory the state has a digital system, but it was so poorly constructed that many could not access it. At the start of the pandemic the website crashed for days. Even several months later people trying to apply had to join a digital queue and wait for hours before being able to log in.
Governments that have embraced the idea of digitising their services—and invested in them—have performed admirably. In Estonia, a country where digital government is so advanced that it is possible to vote online, all citizens have a digitallinked to their bank account and the tax system. That meant that working out which Estonians were furloughed and getting benefits to them was fairly straightforward.
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