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Disaster Strikes Norwegian Government Web Portal
An anonymous reader writes "Altinn.no is a web service run by the Norwegian government, on which citizens can find, fill out and deliver forms electronically. Every year Norwegian citizens can also log in to check their tax results. This year, as every year, the site was unable to cope with the traffic generated from everyone wanting to check their taxes at the same time. New this year, however, was that once people were finally able to log in, a significant amount of people were logged in as someone else. Users then had access to all financial data of this unfortunate person over two years back in time, in addition to the financial information of his wife and the company he worked for. Altinn shut down some 15 minutes later, and has been down since."
I normally wouldn't care about this, but since the Norwegian government (i.e. the people, myself included) paid 1 billion NOK for this solution, I expect it to WORK. Mind you, this is not the first time we've had problems with Altinn, this has been a recurring drama the past few years. As the article states; every year they claim to be prepared, and every year they are unable to deliver.
We're not *that* many people in Norway (recently hit the 5 million mark), and certainly not that many adults checking their tax returns online. Guesstimate: 1 million? And how many checks it simultaneously? Let's be generous and say half.
So how the hell can a 175 million USD project not be able to deal with 500k visitors? It's a fucking joke.
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That's anyones guess, but if it goes like everywhere else, the guys that were contracted for this work wore the nicest suits and made their clients feel visionary. The guys that knew their IT kept behaving improperly and had suits that didn't really fit them well. Also, they talked all the time of risks and danger. So it was a no-brainer, quite literally.
It is done similarly in über-effective, ultra-efficient Singapore:
1) Let's say I'm employed by company C. Company C will send to taxman my identity card number and the amount they have paid me for the tax year.
2) Taxman will do the calculation of tax. Taxman will also consider the recurring tax claims/rebates I am likely to have (spouse/parents-related rebates, for example).
4) Taxman sends me a reminder to confirm their calculations on their website.
5) I will adjust the calculations if needed and submit the final figure.
6) Taxman sends me the final amount of tax I need to pay with payment options including a 12-month instalment plan deducted from my bank account.
7) If I'm audited, I will have to provide documents for the claims/rebates.
Total time spent: about 1 hour (including claims for private insurance, education expenses, donations)
Total $$$ spent: ZERO, ZILCH, NADA!
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
It is certainly very convenient, when it works. It feels kinda strange to trust every financial detail of my life to the government, so whether it is good in a real sense is a question I'm very open to debate. It does allow some very useful applications to be developed, with a very nice potential for streamlining interaction between government, citizens and private sector. This is actually very high on the government's agenda, which I'm happy about, because the bureaucracy is sometimes both heavy and heavy handed. If it is done well, it could potentially enable citizens to simulate possible choices in their lives before they make a decision: "If I do $that, the taxes will be $this". It would also enable an improved public debate: now it is a lot of bickering of the style "if you raise $that_tax, it will adversly effect $that_group" "no, it won't, but not doing it is required by $that_group". They're just making things up, of course, the debate is usually completely devoid of facts. Soon, it might be possible to simulate those scenarios on a regular basis, so we get real facts on the table before making a decision. Unfortunately, there's a long way from good ideas to actual implementations. I've been in meetings with the people who actually order these systems, and what can I say... Heads gotta roll to go anywhere... They're easily blinded by suits, and they have no idea what makes a robust system. So, for now, I'm not too confident it will happen, even though there are some very interesting ideas around.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Basically the same here in Finland. You get a pre-filled tax form in the mail. "Doing my taxes" every year takes no more than 5-10 minutes; checking the values are correct on the form, logging into the tax authority website, making corrections if needed (never needed to), adding deductions as needed, and then submitting it electronically. I even know when I will get my refund way ahead of time. The refund goes straight into my bank account automatically, I don't need to do anything. It's all very easy and simple to understand, even for a layperson without a finance degree.
I don't need a paper record, it's all on file electronically. I only need receipts if I have significant, large deductions.
It is FAR better than the system in the US, where a complete racket has been built up in the form of "tax services", and making the tax laws so complicated and full of loopholes that the average EDUCATED person cannot figure it out in 10 minutes or less. There is a serious problem when you need professional tax services or an accountant to do your personal taxes. I say this as an American living abroad for the past 12 years, so I have much experience with both systems.
Back to the OP, wow... it looks like the tax authority really screwed this up. However, that doesn't change my view that it's still the best way to handle taxes. Mistakes can and do happen in any system. Luckily the issue was discovered rather quickly and they made the correct decision and took the system offline.
They should have called up their Danish brothers in arms - we had the exact same failure here some years ago. Skat.dk kept going down, so they added loadbalancers but the way they assigned keys ended up with collisions and gave users access to other peoples data.
The IRS does indeed re-calculate everything. Last year they added a form to my return I had forgotten to file (but realized I was going to have to re-file shortly after sending in my return) that saved me $1000. It's the second time the processing agent has been extremely decent about handling my return, and I honestly cannot corroborate any of the horror stories that people spread about the IRS.