The Estonian Association of Science Journalists and the Estonian Research Council invited and welcomed fifteen EUSJA science journalists to a study trip to explore Estonian computer science and e-society systems, from 14–17 May 2014. Thanos Labrou, from Greece was there and here’s his story.
By Thanos Labrou
If numbers can tell a story then numbers of Estonia tell a success story. The small Baltic country of 45.227 sq. km. and 1.3 m. inhabitants, may have been a part of Soviet Union just two decades ago, but today can brag about being one of the most advanced e-States of the globe.
Number crunchers will be excited to know that in Estonia 100% of schools and government organizations are ICT equipped, 97% of businesses use computers -in a country where you may be left without sunshine but you’ll never be left without your precious 3G broadband (soon 4G as well) everywhere you are-, or that 99.8% of bank transfers are performed electronically, 95% of income tax declarations made the same way, 95% of medication is bought with a digital prescription and that more than 93% of the population has an e-identity (or mobile ID!) with which you run all your electronic operations and have access to literally everything.
And that’s not all. In 2005, Estonia became the first country in the world to have country-wide elections where citizens could cast their votes over the internet. Since then, a total of six e-elections have been held, with the share of e-votes reaching 25% of the total cast. The country that Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, says “may represent the future of governments, at least in the Western world” and made Jared Cohen, Director of Google Ideas, admit that “Estonia essentially functions as a global cyber power” has made its fame by putting the prefix e- in front of almost everything. e-banking, e-pensions, e-schools, e-voting, e-parking, e-police, e-health, e-diagnoses, e-prescriptions and the latest, “because we want to save trees”, says enthusiastically Anna Piperal, marketing and communication professional of the Estonian ICT Demo Center: e-receipts.
The “once upon a time…” beginning of the fairy tale takes us only 18 years back when innovative project Tiger Leap began in 1996 with a dream of prioritizing IT infrastructure. The efforts spawned a seed of technology-savvy skills among Estonian citizens. In the same decade, legislation was passed that allowed the creation of infrastructure such as the national ID Card project and the X-Road, both pivotal for developing the digital society systems that were to come. Meanwhile, the private sector shared the passion for high-tech solutions with the nation’s banks introducing online services that were ahead of anything in the rest of the West, while entrepreneurs were developing clever innovations like M-Parking and location-based services. The trend continued after the millennium with more integrated e-solutions added each year and the country earning its reputation as a forward-thinking hotbed of practical tech-development. Lesson learned: The golden equation of success includes a forward-thinking government, a pro-active ICT sector rally pop up like cookies beginning with the cyber attacks that took place in April 2007 and the hot debate that constantly goes on regarding the different parameters of e-voting: What about security of data and the data flows? Who handles them and who has access? Is big brother watching, reading, listening? Actually, there can never be totally concrete answers but the general feeling is that citizens, businesses, banks and governmental agencies have a deep trust in the e-stonian way and most will argue that the information flow is so well encoded and continuously improved that abuse is almost impossible.
Like what Estonia has accomplished so far…
Success Stories
– Skype. Developed in Estonia and now owned by Microsoft, Skype allows peer-to-peer communication by voice, video and instant messaging over the Internet. In 2013, Skype users spent more than 400,000 years, cumulatively, on international Skype-to-Skype calls.
– TransferWise. Created by some of the same people who built Skype, this company is poised to spark a financial revolution that waves goodbye to the unfair exchange rates of the old banking system by offering a clever new way to send money abroad.
– Sharemind. The ingenious data analysis system, Sharemind, performs computations on confidential data without compromising privacy. It does not even see the data that it processes. So it can, for example, warn satellite owners about orbital collision risks without revealing the exact trajectories.
Did you know that
– Tallinn is home to the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence and a seat of the EU Agency for Large-Scale IT systems?
– The country’s implementation of e-cabinet, e-tax, e-customs, e-registers and e-voting systems has revolutionised accessibility and quality of government services for its citizens?
– Estonia has launched a nationwide scheme to teach school kids from the age of seven to 19 how to write code?