Early next year, Estonia rolls out its new Smart-ID digital identity system, which is not dependent on a SIM card and can be used around the world.
Using a mobile device to access e-services and provide digital signatures isn't new in Estonia. A very popular SIM-based mobile digital identity system, called Mobiil-ID, was introduced in 2007.
Read more: Android, iOS secure ID: Estonia says it's taking digital authentication to new levels
When former Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Rõivas appeared on the The Daily Show with Trevor Noah in March 2016, the main topic of conversation was the country’s “e-Estonia” model. The model, well-known in Estonia, is aimed at creating more efficient processes by moving online many traditional “brick and mortar” activities such as voting. While the e-Estonia model might have seemed at first a novelty, it is now central to understanding modern Estonia. Beginning in the early 1980s, Soviet Estonia became the epicenter for technological advancement and software development in the USSR as well as being at the forefront of education policy. With the Soviet collapse in the early 1990s, Estonia moved quickly to take advantage of its technological prowess, and young politicians such as Mart Laar, who created Europe’s first flat tax, became intellectual leaders in Central and Eastern Europe. Estonia has been for some time a darling of foreign commentators from both the right and left. But recent political events in Estonia have dampened much of that optimism.
Read more: Estonia’s Innovation Culture: How Did It Happen? – Analysis
Twenty-five years after it regained its freedom from the former Soviet Union, Estonians are celebrating a number of historic events this year along with its emergence as a democratic republic after a half century of Communist rule.
The swearing in this month of the country’s first woman president and the opening of a national museum in the university city of Tartu marked more steps in the tiny country’s evolution since the split with the USSR in 1991. Those steps have included joining the European Union and NATO in 2004 and becoming a respected member of most of the world’s most important organizations, like the United Nations.
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.
E-government measures increase ease of access to state services and increase transparency. Countries like Estonia have successfully implemented over 150 online services and are updating them constantly. Helping other states develop e-government, however, has not been a simple task for Estonia.
An Estonian citizen decides to create a startup business on a whim. Said person takes their government-issued ID card, inserts it in their computer’s card reader, and jacks into the government’s e-business portal. Using secure technology like e-signatures, this citizen can establish a business in minutes and operate it completely remotely. This is just one example of how Estonian e-services expedite tasks for citizens. To read a comprehensive outline of major e-services, click here.