Estonia, this former Soviet republic, has launched an ambitious new Web site to shift as many public services as possible to the Internet. "There will be no need to run around town to different public offices. You can do your running around on the Web," said Arvo Ott, head of the Informatics Department at the Baltic state's Ministry of Economics.
He said it would take nearly a year to list the hundreds of national and municipal Web sites and services, making them reachable from a single home page.
Residents who have new national identity cards can use the site, Citizen's IT Center, to digitally sign all government forms, such as passport applications.
Countries including the United States and Singapore have been developing e-government systems for years.
But cyber-savvy Estonia is something of an anomaly. It embraced Internet technology with the velocity of a Baltic Sea storm after regaining independence during the 1991 Soviet collapse.
Nearly half of Estonians now bank and pay bills online.
Quelle: Daily Herald
