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May 30, 2021

going digital, or not

While the previous Minister of Communications decided to hold back on the digital reform in order to not hurt senior citizens who might have a harder time with going digital, new Minister of Communication Eitan Ginzburg decided to move ahead with the reform and allow communications companies to issue digital receipts as the default option. The country wants to go more green, and this is another step in the process.

Right now the default is getting actually physical printed receipts, but the ministry says that 70% of customers have already switched to digital anyway. The reform would switch the default to digital and anybody who wants printed receipts can still request them. And, anyone over the age of 65 would be excepted by law and their default would remain hard copy (though obviously they could switch to digital if they want to).
source: Calcalist

Deputy Minister of Transportation Uri Maklev does not like this reform saying it will hurt the Haredi community who is largely not on the Internet. According to Maklev, the reform will help the companies and make things more efficient and help them with their bottom line as they will save money on printing and mailings, but it will hurt the weaker sectors. Sure, they can request to get hard copy, but that is a burden on them and many won't or will give up quickly when it is difficult to get a customer representative. Many might not realize even after getting a message of some sort (by sms which Haredim also might not have access to) and requiring the client to be proactive about it will be a problem for many.
source: Kikar

I have said it before and I will say it again. I am not sure the country needs to be prevented from moving forward in a better way. We live in a digital world and if we can save the paper and printing and the mailings and make life easier for people and do it digitally, as most of the country is digital, we should. That being said, if a significant enough portion fo the population wants to stay behind, solutions should be offered, but they should not prevent the progress of the rest of the country. Yes, they will have to be proactive in getting the default digital changed for them to hard copy, but that is the price for preferring to stay behind. If they can come up with another solution to make it easier for them that is also fine by me, as I understand as much as anybody else that it is not pleasant to call the phone company and sit on hold or get passed around from one service representative to another. But they should not be holding back the progress of the rest of the country.





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2 comments:

  1. I thought charedim are not allowed to be "sar" minister of anything, except Sar Litzman. 😊

    ReplyDelete
  2. 1. Maklev is a Deputy Minister, not a Minister.
    2. On the Degel side of UTj they have continued to refuse to be Ministers (though Dep Min has been acceptable), but on the Aguda side of UTJ they have moved on and taken full Ministerial jobs. So far just Litzman I think, in stints as health and housing minister.

    ReplyDelete

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