Spain's digital administration chaos: failing websites and normalized outages

State digital chaos: when every procedure becomes an odyssey

Spanish e-government accumulates failures ranging from the DGT (traffic authority) to the Agencia Tributaria (Tax Agency), passing through the Carpeta Ciudadana (Citizen Folder), Seguridad Social (Social Security), or Correos (postal service). A litany of errors, down websites, and collapsed systems that citizens have come to accept as part of the landscape. The complaint is not new, but the trickle of examples turns exceptions into norms: it would be strange if something worked.

The list of failures is so extensive it almost causes vertigo. The DGT fails when checking vehicles; the Carpeta Justicia prevents access to the case viewer; the Carpeta Ciudadana does not load data nor connect between administrations; the virtual campus of the Universidad Complutense drags syllabi without uploading them; the Agencia Tributaria does not download mobile notifications properly; the appointment system for the DNI loses fifteen minutes; the Seguridad Social collapses for in-person or telephone appointments. And so on, day after day.

Correos, IBI, and the cherry on top from Fruta de Toledo

The initial message adds two more chapters. Correos: every package arriving via this route generates tremors. The tracking website cannot find the code, packages disappear for days, or the mail carrier passes only once when they should pass twice. The second edition incorporates the tax payment website of the Fruta de Toledo: to pay the IBI (property tax) for a home, the page does not work, receipts do not load, and the file cannot be viewed. Another administrative chaos.

The diagnosis: civil servants, politics, and public companies

In the underlying analysis, some argue that everything the State does works poorly by definition. Renfe's website is famous for being a disaster despite having invested millions. It is argued that an organization directed by politicians and managed by public employees can hardly function well. The paradox: paying at the AEAT has always worked. You can see what really matters.

Another current points to the inverse relationship between the number of civil servants and service quality. The more there are, the worse it gets. And if a service that was working is advertised, it starts giving problems. The example cited is the ITV (vehicle inspections) of the Comunidad Valenciana.

INDRA, eternal interns, and the tender business

The finger is also pointed at the companies developing the applications. INDRA appears as the recurring name. An ecosystem of eternal engineering interns is described who, although they have been there for twenty years, still earn junior salaries. Those who stay, it is said, do so because they have no better option. The connected ones, due to its semi-public nature. These people build the State's applications.

The tender process does not help either: websites are made by bidding suppliers, and the cheapest always wins. Civil servants do not necessarily know about frameworks, security, or maintainability, and requests for proposals are a disaster. When offers arrive, the contract is awarded to the cheapest, with an absurd cost per man-day.

The programmer's theory: obsolete systems and fleeing seniors

A programmer explains it bluntly: a State website with dozens of integrations with obsolete SOAP services and business logic that nobody understands is not built by a thirteen-year-old kid in forty-eight hours. Nor are they coded well by the interns from consulting firms that win the contracts. The reality is that senior programmers who code well would not even code drunk for public administrations because they are obsolete systems that contribute nothing to personal development and moreover pay little. It is something done in the junior stage and, as soon as possible, one flies away.

The pattern: collecting yes, serving no

The repeated conclusion is that for collecting money, the systems work perfectly. Notifications fail, websites crash, but embargoes arrive punctually. It is denounced that accounts are seized until left at zero, even the last fifty euros of a seventy-year-old woman, or pensions of elderly people in twenty or thirty euros if they exceed the SMI (minimum wage). They are scum, it is even said. The administration finds you when it wants, but you cannot find it.

The Citizen Folder: they know everything about you, but you cannot do anything

The Carpeta Ciudadana deserves a separate chapter. In it, you see everything: homes, cars, salaries, benefits, medical reports, incivil records, academic titles, unemployment registrations. The administration knows even the shoe you wear. But when you need something, it is not there. The design of the websites is described as archaic, terrible, unintuitive, twisted, and even made in bad faith so that you do not find what you are looking for and do not bother the civil servant lords.

The experience of Correos and the disappeared IBI

A specific case: a claim at Correos because letters took months to arrive, were delivered whenever they felt like it, and in summer there was no delivery. The response, weeks later: "thank you very much for your observations, they help us improve the service." Everything remains exactly the same. Another: a disappeared IBI. Direct debited all his life and it does not appear in notifications or anywhere on the website. Let's see if they have confiscated my house.

The underlying debate: public or private?

The discussion drifts toward the role of the State. Some argue that there should be nothing non-essential that is public, except defense and justice. They demand dismantling the public sector and that civil servants return what they have collected with interest. Opposing this, the observation that in the general state administration there are already automations in repetitive processes and that the IT corps has not been around for long and had vacancies unfilled for years. Now they want to centralize developments from the SGAD (General Secretariat of Administration) and standardize.

The question hangs in the air: if the State were a company, how long would it take to go bankrupt?