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.”
Read more: Estonia’s Nortal helps Dubai create a paperless government
Following the principle set in the first version, Tallinn Manual 2.0 – a document that provides guidance on how the existing international law could be adapted to cyber operations in the most appropriate way – reiterates that cyber activity should not be perceived as happening in a legal vacuum.
Estonia has become one of the forerunners and success stories of introducing digital identity, e-governance and an online voting system. The e-residency programme, which allows foreign citizens living outside of the physical national borders of Estonia to obtain a secure digital identity and benefit from some of the services available, has further increased the interest in Estonia’s digital developments, contributing to Estonia’s image as one of the world’s most digitally advanced countries.
Read more: EE: Tallinn Manual 2.0 – the invaluable guide for state action in cyber space
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
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
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.