The most striking thing about Estonia's e-government system isn't the way it allows anyone to file taxes, vote, or receive a medical prescription, all in a matter of minutes and from a single website. The technology behind it is smart, but not magical. The real surprise is that more countries have yet to build similar systems of their own.
Estonia started planning a move to digital government in 1997. By 2001, the shape of the future system was outlined in a master's thesis written by Arne Ansper, a programmer working for a small Tallinn company called Cybernetica. He had the idea of building a distributed system, in which government departments and private companies could engage in secure peer-to-peer information exchange.
Estonian Economy and Infrastructure Minister Urve Palo signed on Friday an agreement between Estonia and Singapore, with the aim of cooperation in the information and communication technology (ICT) sphere, LETA/Postimees Online reports.
"This is great recognition for the whole of the Estonian ICT sector, and in particular because Singapore has entered into similar agreements with few countries," said Estonian Economy and Infrastructure Minister Urve Palo. "Similar to Estonia, Singapore is a highly developed IT-country and the cooperation agreement opens doors for Estonian entrepreneurs."
Last December, Estonia took the unprecedented step of offering any person in the world a chance to become an Estonian e-resident, a title that grants the holder access to many of the country’s top-notch online government services. Acquiring this status would allow, say, an Indian entrepreneur to establish an Estonian company that he runs from Dubai but which does the bulk of its business in Spain; he’d also be able to use his electronic signature to execute contracts with customers throughout the European Union—and pay no taxes by keeping his profits in Estonia. No wonder that 13,000 people have signed up to beta-test the program in its first nine weeks of operation, and 500 people have already received their e-residency cards.
The innovative approach to government and citizenship developed in the Baltic nation of Estonia was the subject of discussion during an informative talk by Taavi Kotka, Government CIO, Deputy Secretary General of ICT at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications for Estonia, on the first day of The Government Summit.
Read more: Estonia shares vision for digital nation of the future
Economist editor and cyber-security expert Edward Lucas become an e-Estonian at a ceremony held in the capital, Tallinn, which was attended by President Toomas Hendrik.