IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The freelance journalist and a member of the Estonian Centre Party, Abdul Turay, asserts that Estonia’s free public transport system, first introduced in Tallinn in 2013, has justified itself and abolishing the project would be an act of folly.

The editors of this portal asked me to rewrite this article as an op-ed – I originally wrote it as a feature. An astute reader will notice this story is more balanced and fact-laden than an opinion piece would normally be; now you know why.

The Digital Expo, held during the Tallinn Digital Summit, has highlighted the importance of cybersecurity in Europe's efforts to realize its digital future.

Along with e-governance and 5G, cybersecurity has become a key word of the expo.

"E-governance will not work unless people have trust in e-services and digital devices. So we need to strengthen cyber security. The safety can only be achieved if we safeguard European cyber security as a whole," said Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas.

When the epidemic hit Europe, many EU countries came to a halt, but only Estonia could calmly deal with external challenges and crises, and maintain the daily operations of public and private sectors. Looking into the key factors, it can be attributed to Estonia's digital transformation, starting as early as the early '90s.

The 2021 Taiwan Innovation Expo (TIE) invited Estonia to share the Baltic country's thoughts on promoting digital transformation and development. Fusionmedium served as the media partner of the event. Estonia was once rated as "the world's most advanced digital society" by the well-known technology magazine "WIRED".

Estonia is making efforts to start the process that could eventually lead to the point where no country can impose restrictive measures to the free flow of data across the European Union member states’ borders – it is called the fifth freedom of the EU, the free movement of data between the members of the bloc.

“Today, data has become the coal and steel of the digital society,” the Estonian prime minister, Jüri Ratas, said in July at the Digital Single Market Conference (DSM) in Tallinn. One key focus of Estonia’s presidency of the Council of the European Union has been the concept of the free movement of data. The DSM conference gave a concrete introduction of the idea, with politicians, researchers, industry leaders and digital pioneers carefully laying out the benefits and importance of the freedom of cross-border data exchange.

With an aim to enroll over 200 Indian startups in 2018, Estonia has become the first country to launch an e-Residency programme that enables anyone to run a global EU company remotely from anywhere in the world.

To further expand the programme and to discuss bilateral cooperation in the field of Cyber Security, Digitalization, e-Governance, Smart Cities and encourage more Indian startups to become e-Residents, Estonian Entrepreneurship and IT Minister, Urve Palo, visited the Capital recently and shared additional insights into the e-Residency programme.

The small European nation of Estonia is looking to expand its global influence through an "e-residency" programme, allowing anyone worldwide to apply to become an e-resident of the country and set up a company there.

This would mean that people outside the EU could set up an Estonian company over the internet and gain easy access to the European market. E-residents of the Baltic country have access to all the digital government services of a state that prides itself on being a pioneer of e-government.

Expats voted Estonia to the top of their digital life quality list in a new survey.

InterNations, a social network for expats, recently conducted a global survey to gauge the perception of digital lives enjoyed by those living in a foreign country. 68 countries were featured. Although most of the findings confirmed the conventional wisdom, the report also threw up a couple of surprises.

Tiny Baltic state has become a world leader in offering state services online

The hordes of stag and hen parties downing cheap booze in Estonia’s capital Tallinn may not know it, but they are enjoying their pre-marriage celebration in a technologically trailblazing country.

In the past two decades, the tiny north Europe country has become a pioneer of converting public services into online solutions for its citizens.

The Republic of Benin in West Africa is to develop a data exchange platform based on the Estonian model.

The Estonian e-Governance Academy and Benin’s National Information Systems and Services Agency have signed an agreement to design and implement the governmental interoperability framework for enhancing secure data exchange between government authorities and developing digital services for Beninese citizens. The development includes the Estonian secure data exchange platform based on the Estonian X-Road model and several interoperability solutions.

The Freedom on the Net 2016 index, compiled by Freedom House, has ranked Estonia first in the world.

The Freedom House report, one of the most authoritative reports in the field, investigated 65 geographically dispersed and politically diverse countries, and ranked them according to obstacles to access, limits on content and violations of user rights. These results translated into quantitative (0-70) and qualitative (free, partially free, not free) ratings. Estonia retained the status of “free”, and actually improved its score from last year by one point. There were no government-imposed restrictions or disruptions to internet access during the past years.

With Britain missing its turn for the European Union presidency in light of Brexit, the rotating six-month duty has fallen into Estonia’s lap earlier than planned.

Until the end of the year, the northernmost Baltic country will lead the EU through a complicated period: On top of difficult divorce negotiations between Britain and the 27-nation bloc, Estonia will also oversee talks on the Russian Nordstream 2 gas pipeline across the Baltic Sea to Germany, an issue over which several diverging interests are likely to face off in Europe.

The Bank of Estonia (Eesti Pank) is launching a multi-year research project to assess the suitability of its e-Government technology in operating a central bank digital currency.

The initiative, in collaboration with the technology companies Guardtime, the long-term blockchain partner of the Estonian government, and The SW7 Group, will focus on a solution based on the KSI Blockchain, a core technology of e-government in Estonia.

The Tallinn-based multinational strategic change and technology company, Nortal, is helping Dubai’s government become fully digital by 2021.

According to Andres Käärik, Nortal’s business development manager, the company helped Dubai create a vision and roadmap of where they want to go and advised on how to get there. In a blog post, Käärik explained that by 2021, all Dubai’s public services would be available in electronic channels around the clock, and its government would work 365 days a year. “There will be no need to visit any government service centre in person; users receive the results and documentation of services in electronic form on mobile devices.”

Estonia is trying to convince European ministers to agree on the “once only” principle. That means that if one member state has information about a citizen, another member state should not ask for it again, the country’s chief information officer told EURACTIV Slovakia.

For the first time, the European Space Agency has used the Estonian digital signature solution to sign a memorandum – and naturally, the document was between the ESA and Estonia.

Jan Woerner, the director general of the space agency, and Urve Palo, the Estonian minister of entrepreneurship and information technology, signed the Memorandum of Understanding on Information and Communications Technology collaboration on 13 June. According to the space agency, it was the first digital signature signed at the ESA.

15 years after Estonia started to work on e-governnance, time has come for all EU member states, along with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries of Liechtenstein, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland to establishes common goals for the development of e-government over the next five years.

“The Tallinn Declaration does not translate into innovation for Estonia, as we have already complied with the guidelines agreed upon today with other European countries,” said the Minister of Entrepreneurship and Information Technology Urve Palo after the Tallinn Declaration was signed. According to Palo, it is the other EU member states that the Tallinn Declaration will bring about significant changes.

Estonia is looking into the future with plans to digitise everything from voting to healthcare

First there was Skype. Next came ‘e-residency’ – and now, it appears, that’s only the start of the digital innovations that Estonian leaders hope to see emerging from their small country in coming years.

Jaak Aaviksoo, the rector of the Tallinn Technical University and a former government defence and education minister, hopes to see his country become a global leader in brain research and artificial intelligence, both fields that rely heavily on data. Then, others suggest, there are new prospects in digital healthcare, online government and cybersecurity. Says Aaviksoo, in an interview with Science|Business: “Information and data is the new oil of the 21st century.”

Estonia's bold digital initiatives earned it a spot in the highest echelons of the UN's E-Government Development Index. Find out what other countries can learn from Estonia's e-government success.

The European country of Estonia is steeped in history—it's home to the best-preserved medieval capital in Northern Europe. But in the 21st century, Estonia is perhaps most famous for looking to the future, thanks to building an impressive system of e-government.

Estonians can access about 99% of public services online through an encrypted digital ID.

• A new report from The Associated Press outlines Estonia's most recent advancements in its digital government.
• Estonia allows its citizens to vote, obtains medical data and register business documents online.
• Given security concerns and other complications, it remains unclear whether nations like the U.S. could implement similar systems.