Last week, Estonia’s young and energetic Prime Minister Taavi Rõivas visited the United States, where he talked at conferences at different universities, such as Duke University and George Washington University, met with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, and even made an appearance on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, among other stops, the Duke Chronicle reports. His main message? To show how Estonia has benefited from its implementation and use of technology and innovative new e-government services.
At a talk at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, Prime Minister Rõivas stressed how it was the increase of technology and the internet that were major contributors to Estonia’s rapid economic growth in the period since the country regained its independence in 1991. The country becoming more tech-savvy, he explained, was not only practical for average Estonians, but it has also helped increase inter-connectivity between the government and citizens in addition to the functioning and transparency of the government. Estonia’s e-government policies, a movement sometimes referred to as e-Estonia, has been a boon to Estonians through the processes of voting and filing taxes all online. During his interview on The Daily Show, Trevor Noah asked Rõivas if it was true that in Estonia it only took five minutes to file tax returns, a claim made by former US Presidential candidate Jeb Bush; Rõivas’s response was that “it used to be, now we’ve upgraded the system and it’s three minutes on average.”
Prime Minister Rõivas, the youngest leader of a European Union country, is certainly enthusiastic about the potential of e-government in the country, but he is far from the first government official to promote it. In 1991, the year Estonia regained its independence from the Soviet Union, it would have been difficult to imagine that the small country of only a million people would become a hotbed for technological advancement. However, the new Estonian government quickly made technology and internet access a national priority; in 1998, every school in the country was able to get access to the internet, and in 2000, the government declared internet access a human right. This not only increased internet availability in rural areas of Estonia, but also encouraged innovation in technology in both the public and private sectors. Skype, the popular telecommunications program that enables video chat to let users connect via the internet, was invented by Estonians, and although the headquarters of the software are now in Luxembourg, 44% of all Skype employees are stationed in Estonia. Estonia is also a member of the Digital 5, a group of developed nations with a goal of strengthening the digital economy; the other four members are New Zealand, Israel, the United Kingdom, and South Korea.
Estonia has implemented many electronic policies which are meant to help increase interactions between the government and its citizens. Among these policies, Estonians are now allowed to vote online, a practice utilized by approximately one-third of the population. In the 2015 Parliamentary Elections, Estonian citizens located in 126 different counties were still able to cast their ballots. Estonians are also able to use a cryptographically-protected digital signature to sign nearly any document or paperwork from anywhere, with the exceptions of real estate contracts and marriages. And finally, as stated earlier, it takes on average three minutes for Estonians to file their taxes.
E-government reached a whole new level in Estonia when, in late 2014, Estonia became the first country to offer e-residency to non-residents. People who do not live in Estonia of any nationality can go through this process to gain a digital ID card issued by Estonia, similar to the digital ID cards the government gives to regular citizens, opening non-residents up to Estonian businesses. Although Estonian e-residency is not an equivalent to an Estonian passport or visa, it allows non-residents access to Estonian banking systems and the ability to found an enterprise in Estonia. The government’s hope for the program is that it will increase the number of enterprises in Estonia and create an air of entrepreneurial energy throughout the country. This E-Residency program has great potential to increase economic activity through the country, particularly seeing as how Estonia has the largest start-up company per capita ratio in Europe; but most importantly, it was a program created by Estonians and first implemented by Estonians. Even if the program doesn’t succeed, it certainly says something about the innovative nature that Estonia has adopted since regaining independence.
Estonia has certainly made quite impressive strides in internet access and technology in the country, and these in turn have helped facilitate not only economic, but democratic growth. Estonia consistently ranks high in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report, with not only the highest score of the former Soviet Union, but one of the highest scores in all of the former Eastern Bloc as a whole. In only two and half short decades, Estonia has successfully integrated itself into the digital world, and it only continues to increase its online presence every year. And with Estonia being described by many experts as one of the most wired countries in all of Europe, Prime Minister Rõivas definitely has a right to be proud of his country.
Newborn Republic 