Estonians not only vote and pay taxes online, but also buy property, register cars, sign contracts, and apply for unemployment benefits digitally. Nearly every service linked with a government office can be done online.
All of this activity hinges upon public trust in digital governance that’s been hard to replicate in other countries.
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Few rank either government or technology as trustworthy. But then there are Estonians, who are deeply invested in their country’s e-government programs, which were developed over decades to make life easier and more secure.
It takes decades to build up the kind of comfort Estonia has with digitization, says Linnar Viik, a leading Estonian computer scientist. “It was kind of word of mouth and private and personal experience.”
Trust also had to flow from leadership to the technology industry. One such example: In 2000, Mr. Viik was allowed to convert Cabinet meetings from paper-based – at the time, they required knee-high stacks of printouts – to completely digital after one conversation with the prime minister.
“He asked, ‘Do we have any other examples around the world of paperless government?’” recounts Mr. Viik. “I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Cool, OK, do we have money for that?’”
The Cabinet budget had $85,000 left for printing in that fiscal year, and Mr. Viik spent it on hardware, software, and training. What resulted was the paperless e-Cabinet: a fully wired room that drew global media attention.
Getting married is now one appointment easier in Estonia.
The world’s most digitally integrated country launched the sacred union into the e-governance stratosphere last year – where it joined nearly every other government service you can imagine.
Estonian citizens were already able to file taxes online, vote online, and access digital prescriptions. All of this digital activity hinges upon the Estonian smart identification system – which allows for state-recognized digital signatures – and a public trust in digital governance that’s been hard to replicate in other countries.
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Few rank either government or technology as trustworthy. But then there are Estonians, who are deeply invested in their country’s e-government programs, which were developed over decades to make life easier and more secure.
“I actually own my data – I can always track when someone looks at my data,” says Kristiina Veerde-Toompalu. “I trust [my government]. It’s such a trademark for Estonia that we have these options that they’ve worked hard to make it secure.”
Ms. Veerde-Toompalu got married in July, and applying online for the certificate saved her and her fiancé a special trip to her hometown’s city registrar. “We don’t have to go somewhere and announce our intention to get married,” she says. “I could also visually see [on the government app] options of my new name and my old name, and try them out.”
To deploy digital services successfully requires Estonians to trust the act of offering up to the cloud everything from birthdate and birthplace to tax information, salary, and medical diagnoses. That public trust took decades to cultivate, and ultimately relies on Estonia’s tight and transparent system of regulation.
“Paper files are not safer, because you cannot tell who looked at an analog file,” says Kersti Kaljulaid, who served as president of Estonia from 2016 to 2021. “Estonian e-governance is a tightly regulated environment. Each and every citizen knows that government does everything to protect their data. It even says in the law, the data belongs to citizens, and you have control over who looks at your data, and you can ask them why they did. This is a luxury compared to an analog world, and I believe this is why we have this in-built trust.”
“Another layer of trust”
It takes decades to build up the kind of comfort Estonia has with digitization, says Linnar Viik, a leading Estonian information technology scientist and government adviser since 1995. “Trust in digital channels didn’t happen overnight. It was kind of word of mouth and private and personal experience,” he says.
“When you’re sitting at the family dinner table and I’m saying, ‘You know what? I emailed our mayor’s office earlier today and they responded,’” he says, “the children are listening – and then they’ll also try.”
Trust also had to flow from leadership to the tech industry, and it did. “That is another layer of trust, whether you as a leader trust the experts on something you don’t understand. The politicians started to listen to the technology people and gave them space,” says Mr. Viik.
One such example: In 2000, Mr. Viik was allowed to convert Cabinet meetings from paper-based – at the time, they required knee-high stacks of printouts – to completely digital after one conversation with the prime minister.
“He asked, ‘Do we have any other examples around the world of paperless government?’” recounts Mr. Viik. “I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Cool, OK, do we have money for that?’”
The Cabinet budget had $85,000 left for printing in that fiscal year, and Mr. Viik spent it on hardware, software, and training for Cabinet ministers and staff. What resulted was the paperless e-Cabinet: a fully wired room that drew global media attention.
Over the years, more and more services were placed online, a result of the latitude granted to tech innovators and advisers, as well as the public’s growing acceptance of digitization.
Start the process, then fix the problems
Now Estonians not only vote and pay taxes online, but also buy property, register cars, sign job and rental contracts, and apply for unemployment benefits digitally. Nearly every service linked with a government office can be done digitally. And for many services, citizens need not even apply, as certain entitlements are automated. That includes parental allowances and child support.
Digitization also extends to health care, with every provider required to submit patient information to a centralized digital health authority. This can be helpful when, say, an emergency doctor needs to access records for a patient undergoing a crisis.
“The connotations [around trust] are different in different countries,” says Mr. Viik. “There are really social and cultural reasons for that type of mistrust” of government having our data. Other European Union governments – particularly Germany, which has a long history with government surveillance – want to mitigate all risk before digitizing.
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“In Estonia, we would rather say, ‘Let’s start doing things,’ and only then we can find out what are the problems we need to mitigate,” he says.
The paradox is that people already offer up enormous amounts of personal data to Google, Facebook, and other companies that are not only foreign but also governed independently, Mr. Viik says. “The institution you can control and govern is your own government – but you don’t trust? Why you don’t trust your government who is under your control?”
Estonia’s practical approach to digitization appears to have paid off.
Officials estimate that citizens have saved roughly five workdays a year from the digital signature alone – that’s from not having to go stand in line at a government office, request a document by mail, or file taxes by paper.
Meanwhile the government saves on staffing and other operating costs. Adoption by the public is near complete; more than 99% of Estonians file their taxes and access medical data online according to statistics from the e-Estonia initiative.
Focus on flash, not function?
But digitization isn’t all roses. A still-present digital divide leaves some people behind, whether it’s those who aren’t tech savvy or can’t afford computers.
“They say, ‘I don’t have the skills; I cannot use the system; I don’t have grandchildren to help me,’” says Andra Siibak, a media studies expert at the University of Tartu. “It’s not so straightforward, and for these people, [digitization] has made life not more convenient, but much more difficult.”
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Leelo Telling, a recently retired kindergarten teacher’s aide, says she was raised to “trust and expect the best from others and from society,” and filed her taxes online the very first year she could. But some services required that “I call my kids for help,” she says.
Another problem is that the public trust could be considered naive, as it’s predicated on an idea of “I have nothing to hide,” says Dr. Siibak. Yet to date, hacking and data breaches haven’t been significant issues.
Kristjan Kikerpill, a digital sociologist and cybercrime expert at the University of Tartu, warns that Estonia may now be spending too much time prioritizing the next flashy thing to offer online instead of “nuts and bolts” items that might truly make life easier.
“Now you can get married online, but how many times in your lifetime will you use such a service?” says Dr. Kikerpill. “It’s become a big song and dance around marketing such services, instead of solving small daily problems with improved efficiency, robustness, and reliability.” For example, he says, declaring customs on packages is still incredibly cumbersome.
Still, Ms. Veerde-Toompalu, now eight months married, has been happy to trade her data for ease of use.
She and her now-husband bought a house from sellers that they met virtually for the notary signing. When they eventually have their first child, registering the baby at the hospital will also generate monthly child care payments, as well as a place on a kindergarten waitlist.
“What we have now is so convenient,” she says. “You don’t need to go anywhere.”
Maris Hellrand contributed to this report.