You pay 19 euros every month for WMO assistance from the municipality, for example for help with the household. Payment is made by direct debit and yet you will receive a paper invoice for this every month from service provider Cak. That is pointless, because the amount is the same every month and the letter can go straight into the trash. You have asked to stop sending the invoices that you already receive in your digital environment. But the Cak says it’s impossible to stop the mail. What a waste of paper.
I did a little research on the major government agencies that send a lot of mail. In total, the Tax and Customs Administration, the Benefits Service, the Social Insurance Bank and the Cak send 187 million paper letters a year.
You cannot withhold paper mail at the Tax Authorities, Benefits and the Cak. The Tax and Customs Administration is of course the largest, with 160 million letters to private individuals and companies. It is not known when it will be possible to waive the blue envelopes. ‘It’s in the future. There is no concrete planning yet,’ says the spokesperson for the Tax and Customs Administration evasively.
The Cak serves 1 million citizens and sends them 10.5 million letters every year, three quarters of which are for the WMO and the rest for the Long-term Care Act (WLZ). To be able to send these only digitally, ‘adjustments in our systems’ are necessary.
The Cak says it must take legal regulations into account. A lame excuse, because municipalities have to meet the same standards and they feel free to send decisions only by e-mail. This concerns Articles 2.14 and 3.41 of the General Administrative Law Act. Article 3.41 prescribes that government institutions announce decisions by sending or issuing them to the data subject. Pursuant to Article 2.14, this is also allowed by e-mail, if the citizen states that he is easily accessible. An e-mail should not contain information that scammers can use, such as a Citizen Service Number (BSN). Sending a PDF is safer, because it is then difficult to change a bank account number, for example.
The Social Insurance Bank (SVB) is digitally better developed. No fewer than 5.7 million citizens receive money from SVB, such as AOW, PGB and child benefit. You can choose to receive mail from SVB digitally, for example via the Message Box of My Government. There are 2.5 million Dutch people who receive mail from SVB via this Message Box. In total, SVB sends out 5.5 million paper letters per year. “Some letters may not be sent digitally or are not suitable for it,” said a spokesperson. ‘Consider, for example, a confirmation of a change of address.’
The Benefits service sends 14 million messages digitally with a provisional allocation, but the 10 million final decisions are always on paper. The final decisions often show whether too much or too little supplement has been paid. ‘Anyone who applies for a supplement’, says the spokesperson, ‘usually prefers paper mail.’
Reinout van der Heijden is editor-in-chief of the Geldgids
Have a question yourself? Money [email protected]