Disaster Strikes Norwegian Government Web Portal 176
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."
Not just the login error (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Some key points (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Learn from the Experts, ye tax-boggled folks! (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Future possibilities by automated taxes (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Remember how they file their taxes (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Some key points (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Remember how they file their taxes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Learn from the Experts, ye tax-boggled folks! (Score:4, Interesting)
Although I can't comment on Norway from personal experience, I've had to complete tax forms in Finland, the UK and the USA.
The Finnish ones were genuinely trivial: check option A or option B, sign it, date it and send it back: done. The tax office there knew exactly what was going on, the money was transferred electronically and the only other piece of correspondence I received was a confirmation slip.
The British one was oh, a couple of sheets of A4 or so. Annoying, but manageable. The tax office there had actually issued it despite my not actually needing to file a manual return at all, so I had to fill it in with mostly zeroes and send it back. They initially seemed confused, and then just went quiet after a couple of clarifying conversations with people at the local office.
The USA one was about 6 or 7 forms (I never did work out how many in the end), all with accompanying small-print documentation which in turn contained references to additional supporting documentation that contained "calculation tables" to supposedly help me understand the supporting documentation, so that I could then go back and fill in the tax form itself, and all its add-on appendices. I was told that I had the option of supplying a shoe-box full of receipts that I should have been religiously collecting for the previous year, or I could just take some standard number. I was also told that if I filled the forms in by following the incorrect advice of an official of the tax office, I was still liable for any additional fines arising. I have a Ph.D. in astrophysics, so I'm not unfamiliar with mathematics and logic, and even I just went ahead and hired an accountant.
The USA's taxation scheme is far and away the most complex bureaucratic structure I have ever encountered. The 19th Century British Empire's mightiest bureaucrats would have wept in joy at its sheer scale and complexity. Kafkaesque doesn't begin to describe it.