Idiocy at the Centre for Work and Income
Jun. 15th, 2007 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhialtoI just went to the CWI (Centrum voor Werk en Inkomen) and I witnessed some sheer idiocy.
To apply for unemployment benefits, they now have a website (no paper forms anymore). To use it, you first need a state-sanctioned identification for "digital signature" purposes (their terminology, and I have no doubt that is not used in the technically correct way) called DigiD. Then you spend an hour and a half filling in stuff on a buggy website that reputedly crashes often (and indeed it did, just after I had finished fortunately). Lots of this info is stuff they know already since they asked it also on all the previous applications: education, previous employment over the last years, etc.
They also make you chase photocopies of employment contracts, monthly salary summaries (and they internally disagree how many they want; one instruction says 2 months, another says 6 or 9) and other stuff.
Then they "invite" you to an intake interview which was mercifully short since I announced I had found another job. I remarked that fortunately, thanks to the new electronic system, I would not have to supply so much identical information the next time, only to be told that no I will have to fill it in all over again. After that you are sent to another desk to deliver all the photocopies.
At the desk they told me that I had not needed that interview, since my employer was in education and they are supposed to take care of outplacement and stuff themselves.
And then you discover the crowning touch: that I had filled in all the electronic forms with blood sweat and tears (and "digital signature") only to have them printed out and presented to me to put my signature underneath. The whole lot is put in a folder and no doubt processed manually.
Whoever "designed" this procedure should be fired on the spot for gross incompetence and because cruel and unusual punishment is illegal.
To apply for unemployment benefits, they now have a website (no paper forms anymore). To use it, you first need a state-sanctioned identification for "digital signature" purposes (their terminology, and I have no doubt that is not used in the technically correct way) called DigiD. Then you spend an hour and a half filling in stuff on a buggy website that reputedly crashes often (and indeed it did, just after I had finished fortunately). Lots of this info is stuff they know already since they asked it also on all the previous applications: education, previous employment over the last years, etc.
They also make you chase photocopies of employment contracts, monthly salary summaries (and they internally disagree how many they want; one instruction says 2 months, another says 6 or 9) and other stuff.
Then they "invite" you to an intake interview which was mercifully short since I announced I had found another job. I remarked that fortunately, thanks to the new electronic system, I would not have to supply so much identical information the next time, only to be told that no I will have to fill it in all over again. After that you are sent to another desk to deliver all the photocopies.
At the desk they told me that I had not needed that interview, since my employer was in education and they are supposed to take care of outplacement and stuff themselves.
And then you discover the crowning touch: that I had filled in all the electronic forms with blood sweat and tears (and "digital signature") only to have them printed out and presented to me to put my signature underneath. The whole lot is put in a folder and no doubt processed manually.
Whoever "designed" this procedure should be fired on the spot for gross incompetence and because cruel and unusual punishment is illegal.
