By Gary Anthes
Over the next decade, the population of Estonia is expected to increase more than 600%, from 1.3 million to 10 million.
No, a flood of immigrants is not likely to invade the tiny Baltic republic. This year, Estonia becomes the first country in the world to open its borders to e-residents—people who sign up for digital identification cards and digital signatures for access to a wide array of national electronic services and databases. The idea is to provide a gateway by which people outside of Estonia can make investments in Estonia, establish businesses there and, eventually, use the country as a bridge to commerce elsewhere in the European Union.
The bold plan is a logical step forward in an unprecedented roll-out of e-government services that began in 2000, when Estonia introduced a public system for electronic tax filing. In 2002, Estonia introduced a universal electronic identification card with digital signatures, which every citizen gets at the age of 15. The ID cards and signatures have become the keys to nearly universal access to government information and services as well as private-sector services in health care, banking and education, and law. In the years since, the Estonian government and industry have put more and more functions online, all connected by a nationwide data backbone called X-Road.
Digital signatures in Estonia are so widely used and trusted that they are now preferred to signatures on paper, says Siret Schutting, managing director of e-Estonia Showroom. She estimates digital signatures save the country 2% of GDP, or $500 million a year. "We can use it everywhere," she says. "It's legally the same as a handwritten signature."
The Estonian e-tax system, along with X-Road's access to multiple government and private sector databases, has made tax filing unimaginably simple, at least by U.S. standards. "No one even considers paper as a possibility anymore," says Siim Tuisik, an Estonian citizen lobbyist for open data and digital rights. "If you are a private citizen, you make five or six clicks. All the data is already there; everything is prefilled, so unless something is wrong, you don't need to add anything."
Other countries, especially in Europe, are eyeing Estonia's successes with envy. "Estonia is way ahead of other countries, really a model," says Clare Sullivan, a cyber-lawyer and professor at the University of South Australia School of Law. "They are where we are all going to be in five to 10 years." Estonia has the most advanced e-society in the world, with the government offering some 600 e-services to citizens and 2,400 to businesses, she says.
Why Estonia?
Sullivan says Estonia's progress is due in part to a strong commitment to Information Technology (IT) on the part of the prime minister and other senior government officials, stemming from the country's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. "It was very poor, and struggling to establish its own identity and own economy," she says. "They had few resources otherwise, so they decided to go with IT."
"Information technology allows us to achieve beyond our natural means as a small government and country," said Prime Minister Taavi Rõivas in an interview. "That is why we have implemented a trusted national identity scheme, universal data exchange layer X-Road, various digital services and initiatives in all walks of life." He said he is deeply involved in the roll-out of Estonia's digital services as chairman of the E-Estonia Council, which "steers the making and execution of national digital agenda in the country."
Cultural and environmental factors have also driven Estonia's remarkable progress into digital services. The public puts a great deal of faith in the integrity of the systems and databases linked by X-Road. "The idea of people not trusting government is, if I may say so, a very American thing," Sullivan says. "In Europe, distrust is centered more on business than on government, and in Estonia, it's become part of the culture. They have been doing this since the early 2000s, and they are hooked on the convenience of it."
Estonia is smaller than West Virginia, and the third-poorest of the 28 countries in the EU. Not surprisingly, a number of high-tech start-ups in the country have focused on cross-border flows. For example, Skype for voice and video communications, and TransferWise for moving money, have their origins in Estonia.
"Nordic countries strongly believe in the inclusion of different social groups, and the digital solutions help do that," Schutting says. "Access here is not a privilege, it's a right." Indeed, she says, even the poorest citizens have free Internet access at libraries, banks, post offices, and other places. A project begun in 2009, called EstWin, aims to bring 100 Mbit/s Internet access to every citizen of Estonia by the end of this year. By 2018, the speed for many users is due to be boosted to 2.5 Gbit/s.
Elsewhere in the World
Estonia may be a world leader, but it is hardly alone in its moves to public e-services. Last year, Estonia joined with the United Kingdom, South Korea, Israel, and New Zealand to establish an initiative called D5. At the first annual D5 Summit in London last December, the five countries drafted a charter pledging to work together and share ideas to develop and integrate electronic public services.
D5 emerges from the wreckage left by the U.K.'s failed rollout of a national identity card system several years ago. The huge, and hugely expensive, card project, along with a proposed National Identity Register, were scrapped in 2010 in the face of strong opposition from the public and from some quarters in government over concerns about an erosion of civil liberties and privacy. Estonia was made a charter member of the D5 by other members looking for guidance on these kinds of efforts, according to citizen activist Tuisik. "We get about 400 official visits each year that concentrate on digital matters," he says.
Source: http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/6/187320-estonia/fulltext