rooms full of filing cabinets

These used to work great only a few decades ago - even a few years ago in my native country. And some of the people working in them were actually really friendly and helpful, even in non-standard cases. They just added another paper to the physical file, add a stamp, there it's official! But I've also met unhelpful and biased people, as we probably all have at some point. Now I am using mostly online and digital services. It has been captcha hell recently (probably because of the legacy applications @Dave@lemmy.nz mentioned in another comment. I think they used this country as an alpha version test country for all sorts of online government services and some of the stuff is very dated. It's actually great when it works, no running or waiting around with physical documents.

I think both systems can work and can be good. After careful rethinking I would wager a guess that in the computing version (developing and maintaining well functioning and safe public service websites) we end up operating more sustainably because everybody can handle their stuff remotely. Although I don't know enough about communication infrastructure vs a well run public transport system/walkable town setup to really be sure.