Estonia, which gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, is one of the fastest countries in preparing for the 4th Industrial Revolution in the European Union.
The country has been ranked 32nd at World Economic Forum’s recently announced “Global Competitiveness Index” out of 140 countries.
Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid wants the world to realize that technology makes you free. At the same time, as she told Fortune’s Nina Easton at the Most Powerful Women Summit in Laguna Niguel, Calif. on Tuesday, “Technology doesn’t make you safe; it’s all up to the people using it.”
Kaljulaid told the summit audience about her digital-first republic. Estonians live in an increasingly digital country, with an e-government infrastructure that was introduced in 2001. So-called E-stonia is built on a platform called X-Road, a digital infrastructure that supports both public and private services. Kaljulaid says that the infrastructure works like an app store, where nearly any business or individual that has built a product or service can make it available online.
Read more: How Estonia Is Leading the Charge in E-Citizenship
Estonian company Cybernetica is developing a data exchange layer for Greenland similar to the X-Road solution being used in Estonia. Greenland's system, however, will be called Pitu.
A Pitu conference dedicated to e-government solutions and the implementation of the X-Road data exchange layer was held in Greenland last week, sponsored by the Estonian Embassy in Copenhagen and the Greenlandic Agency for Digitisation.
Read more: Estonia's Cybernetica to develop data exchange system for Greenland
President Kersti Kaljulaid on Tuesday said that e-residency must take into consideration a wider societal benefit, adding that cooperation between the public and private sectors has a vital role to play in the e-residency project.
"We must clarify whether e-residents are a community of our friends, a platform of e-services for the entrepreneurs of the world or some third or fourth thing," Kaljulaid said in a press release. "We must also jointly reach an understanding regarding how both an entrepreneur in Võru and an accountant in Saaremaa could benefit from the programme."
Read more: EE: Kaljulaid on e-residency: Cooperation with private sector important
It’s fair to say people have better things to do than visit government offices and fill out paper forms — in Estonia the government agrees.
When Estonia became an independent nation back in 1991 and began building its information society there was no digital data being collected about it citizens.
Read more: Estonia’s former PM says governments have a responsibility to provide digital services