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I have to admit, I never groked eGovernment. I always saw these efforts as a subsidy for new technologies like electronic signatures or digital receipts.

This morning my wife asked me about a flyer in the paper promoting DE-Mail. First sign of failure: the message did not come across, my wife dropped the ad into the paper basket.

The idea behind DE-Mail is to provide a secure means of communication between government agencies and you. That’s already the first issue I have with DE-Mail – I live online, yet I had no desire to communicate with any government agency in the last 10 years (not that I can think of). I either call them or drop by directly – most of the time you need them to sign some document that they couldn’t send electronically anyway (passport, drivers license).

Here’s an excerpt from an article on DE-Mail (sorry – german only) that highlights all the great ideas:

Here’s what I think is wrong with DE-Mail:

What you need to do:

• You need yet another EMail address. No, thank you very much.
• You need to register at the post office with a passport
• You can only use it from a special web site
• Each session needs additional authorization with a mobile TAN

What you get for all that effort:

• If a government agency sends you something it counts as delivered after 3 days, even if you’re not at home
• Once you open your mailbox, the agency gets a digitally signed receipt. No more denial.
• If you send something and want the agency to acknowledge receipt, YOU need to pay for that
• You can send documents to people with no DE-Mail address. That will then be printed out and delivered via paper mail, at additional cost

Don’t think that will fly. At all.