Today is the day when up to 300,000 Danes can no longer access their online banking. They also cannot use any of the gazillion public services that require a login. That’s because the old public ID system in Denmark has been retired, and everyone has to use the insecure and shoddily built new one.
The reason thousands of people are left behind is the cumbersome signup process that – among other things – involves scanning the chip in your passport with a modern smartphone. It turns out many people can’t figure out how to do that. But that is not a problem for the organization behind the ID system. They simply tell users to show up at the local service point in their town for help.
It is, however, a problem for the overworked local service center employees. They are staffed to (barely) manage their usual work. Dumping 500,000 IT support tasks on them has predictably led to huge waiting times for an appointment for anything.
Don’t allow your IT systems to dump their problem somewhere else and declare themselves a success.