As Estonia emerged from behind the Iron Curtain in the early 1990s, the country of 1.3 million quickly created an e-government infrastructure that put the nascent one in the U.S. to shame.
Everyone in the country votes and pays taxes online. An ID card that all Estonians carry not only identifies them in the physical world, but also works in electronic environments. The ID card can be used to encrypt documents and add a digital signature, a legal equivalent to a regular paper signature. It also allows people to access almost any e-service in Estonia, including those of banks, utility companies, and the state's own portal. It even allows citizens to pay parking tickets with mobile phones.
Also plugged into the Estonian e-environment are the police and the school systems. Every police car is equipped with a computer, Internet access, and devices that communicate information about the car to a central server. Police officers can access the information system, and a network called xRoad that offers access to files on car registry, traffic insurance, population, health insurance, as well as registries for offenders and weapons.
Estonian schools have gone electronic too. Parents, students, teachers and school administrators can connect via the Internet, making school information accessible from home. With everything from grades to attendance records available in one area, the work routine for teachers and school management is less stressful and easier to manage. By combining all day-to-day transactions and processes into one e-government infrastructure, Estonia stands as a prime example as to how smoothly a country can run when everyone is on the same page.
When it works. Interconnected networks are vulnerable for the same reasons they're valuable. Estonia got a bitter taste of this when Russian cyber terrorists hacked the government’s electronic infrastructure in April 2007 and brought the country to a halt. The cyber attacks began after Estonian officials relocated the Bronze Soldier, a Soviet-era war memorial, to a park outside the nation's capital, which caused heated debate among ethic Russians. The attack points were even commanded through blogs and other technological media.
For President Obama and his new team, Estonia stands as a valuable case study in how to protect oneself from the tender grace of technology, and also how beneficial it would be to have a system that’s easy to use and productive, compared to the stresses that are caused by what’s in place now.
Imagine not having to wait in line at the RMV for an hour only to spend five minutes at the counter. If transaction services were all on the Internet, then you could do business anytime and anywhere you want, from the privacy of your own home. Also, not all decisions are made between 8 am and 5 pm like most companies offer. If everything were combined into one e-environment there would be 24-hour access to information which would reduce the annoyance of having to fill your day bouncing from one bill collector to the other.
Estonia is a prime model for the Obama Administration by showing that when everything is connected into one e-government there is more control of what is going on. For the last few years America has been running around frantically like a decapitated chicken. The government system that is in place is running thin. Obama knows it, the American people know it, and the rest of the world knows it. With other tech-exporting countries such as Singapore, China, Japan and India biting at the heels of America’s lead in the global scheme, our government needs to change its ways before complete chaos ensues. It is time for a new pillar to rise combining government and technology, not only for the well being of the people, but also for the country.
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Quelle/Source: OhMyGov!, 13.02.2009
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