Skip the lines, forget about bribes. E-gov gives anyone with a web connection direct access to public services.
Had Franz Kafka been born in 21st-century Tallinn, Estonia, instead of 19th-century Prague, some of the gems of modernist literature might never have been written. Instead of the man from the country who spends years trying to get past an implacable gatekeeper in the short story “Before the Law,” all he’d need in Estonia is a government-issued electronic identity card. Then he could go online or stick the bar-coded ID into a card reader and, moments later, sign a contract with an international corporate partner, pay a traffic fine, and file his taxes. No lines, no bribes, no forms in triplicate, and no need to plead his case “with one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last,” as in Kafka’s hellish vision. OK, so our bookshelves would be the poorer—but our lives are a hell of lot easier.
