Commentary on the military service debate: Boomers on the user front line

In the discussion about the possible reintroduction of compulsory military service, the Green Party recently proposed the introduction of compulsory "voluntary service" for everyone between the ages of 18 and 67. At first, I wondered what they wanted to do with all us boomers who are fast approaching retirement. Apart from my personal aversion to the military: I don't have the mobility to drive a tank and I'm prevented from shooting because my eyesight is already clearly deteriorating.

An opinion by Tim Gerber

Tim Gerber is a trained theater lighting technician and lighting master, studied law in Leipzig and has been a c't editor since 2001. Initially responsible for printers, currently for programming, soldering and tinkering with electronics as well as consumer topics in the “Caution, customer” section.

But when I recently tried once again to fulfill some administrative requirement via a lovelessly knitted-together government portal, I wondered whether those responsible would ever try out the confusing crap before they unleashed it on the people online. I had a brilliant idea. Sign up testers! Those responsible in politics and administration, who have been promising us a breakthrough in the digital modernization of the state for a good two decades, are certainly not lacking in good will. But there is clearly a lack of structured evaluation of "user experience".

Perhaps, on the other hand, there is a lack of willingness to process such feedback. But an army of obligated test users for all the federal, state and local authority administration portals would also solve this problem. The horde could also enable meaningful statistical evaluations of the most frequently criticized obstacles and thus an accurate prioritization of improvements. On the other hand, meaningful user feedback can hardly be generated by a few employees within the authorities.

This "freedom service" would certainly free us from all kinds of hurdles when accessing the administration online. So, dear fellow citizens from the baby boomers: Don't ask what digitization can do for you, rather ask what you can do for digitization!

(tig)