IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

According to one of the project managers behind the I-Voting system, the procedure is quick and easy. The voter pushes the electronic chip of his identity card into a reader, calls up the special electoral web page on the Internet, gives two PIN codes and puts his cross beside one of the parties. "This takes no longer than 15 seconds," says Tarvy Martins.

Finnish digital prescriptions are now valid in neighboring Estonia, thanks to an EU health data initiative.

After a two-hour ferry ride to the capital of southern neighbor Estonia, any Finnish traveler who forgets to bring vital prescription drugs now doesn't need to panic and buy an early ticket home.

They can just head to the nearest pharmacy in the tiny Baltic state's capital of Tallinn and, using their ID-card, obtain the drugs that had been prescribed in Finland.

Estonia is built on secure state e-systems, so the world was watching when it hit a huge ID-card problem.

For the past two and a half months, Estonia has been facing the biggest security crisis since a wave of cyberattacks hit its banks and critical national infrastructure in 2007.

At the heart of the current debacle is the latest version of its national ID card, which has been a mandatory identification document for citizens of Estonia since 2002 and serves as a cornerstone of Estonia's e-state.

While undoubtedly convenient, e-voting in Estonia might not be as safe as President Ilves think

An independent group of researchers recently tested the Estonian I-voting system used during the last municipal elections, held in October 2013, and concluded that the flaws and lapses in operational security make it vulnerable to manipulations. Therefore, it cannot be considered safe enough.

The Reform Party, Pro Patria and Res Publica Union (IRL) and the Social Democratic Party rocketed through their order of business, smashing their record from earlier this year when they amanged to dispatch 14 items in four minutes.

The country's very own cryptocurrency is just the start.

Kaspar Korjus has big plans for Estonia’s future. He’s the managing director of the country’s e-Residency initiative, a futuristic idea that made headlines in 2014 for allowing anyone in the world to become a virtual resident and start a company. Now, Korjus has a bigger goal in mind: to become the world’s first country with its very own cryptocurrency.

The “ambitious new proposal,” outlined in a Medium post in August, would expand on the idea behind e-Residency, which has already seen over 20,000 people sign up. With Estcoin, anyone could invest in Estonia, using something similar to Bitcoin.

According to Johns Hopkins University, Estonia’s novel coronavirus numbers have generally stayed similar to those of its neighbors in the European Union. With an infection number so far at just above 2,000 it is slightly above the rates of nearby Latvia and Lithuania, but well below Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. By the end of July the death toll remained below 70, and with over 2,000 cases had recovered. However, in addition to its relatively low coronavirus numbers compared to those of other European nations, Estonia appears to have also experienced one of the lowest levels of panic amidst the pandemic. To fight the virus, Estonia has deployed familiar techniques: lockdowns, testing, emptying of intensive care wards, human contact-tracing, and government-mandated quarantine. However, Estonia’s coronavirus response is most distinguishable from its global counterparts because of its digital capabilities and “solutions” to the virus.

The Estonia-based consultancy organisation, the e-Governance Academy, has helped deliver e-services in Benin and Ukraine; the academy says the current coronavirus pandemic shows that digital services can save people’s health and possibly their lives.

“To date, the main arguments to develop public e-services were the hassle-free and more efficient governance to save time and money,” the academy said in a statement. “The current coronavirus pandemic added one more argument: e-governance and e-services can save people’s health and possibly their lives.”

Innovations like Skype, TransferWise, Pipedrive push Baltic state’s post-Soviet success

Amid the fog of uncertainty over Brexit, a growing number of Britons are finding a route to remain in the European Union through a tiny country on the Baltic Sea.

The tiny Baltic country of 1.3 million people has long led the way on issues like e-government and e-health.

When Estonia won its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, its economy produced very little and its people literally went hungry following the collapse of the Soviet economy and food and goods distribution systems.

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.

When former Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Rõivas appeared on the The Daily Show with Trevor Noah in March 2016, the main topic of conversation was the country’s “e-Estonia” model. The model, well-known in Estonia, is aimed at creating more efficient processes by moving online many traditional “brick and mortar” activities such as voting. While the e-Estonia model might have seemed at first a novelty, it is now central to understanding modern Estonia. Beginning in the early 1980s, Soviet Estonia became the epicenter for technological advancement and software development in the USSR as well as being at the forefront of education policy. With the Soviet collapse in the early 1990s, Estonia moved quickly to take advantage of its technological prowess, and young politicians such as Mart Laar, who created Europe’s first flat tax, became intellectual leaders in Central and Eastern Europe. Estonia has been for some time a darling of foreign commentators from both the right and left. But recent political events in Estonia have dampened much of that optimism.

The European Commission organised a contest for determining the projects that best support the implementation of the EU eGovernment strategy. The ‘Best Practices’ title was granted to the paper-free documents exchange project submitted by the State Chancellery.

Many nations are joining China in developing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). At the beginning of October, Estonia's Central Bank announced the launch of its own digital currency research initiative.

This decision was made following other central banks’ activities in virtual currency, including the European Central Bank (ECB).

Called MiCa, the vehicle developed by Auve Tech, is equipped with seven lidar sensors and 10 cameras and has been designed for use in all weather conditions.

Estonian tech company Auve Tech is launching a next-generation self-driving shuttle that allows driving in various weather and traffic conditions.

ch has already agreed a strategic collaboration with SoftBank subsidiary Boldly to develop a Japanese-specification model of the vehicle, with a view to having it running on public roads by the end of 2023.

The Estonian e-Governance Academy will lead the electronic governance and cybersecurity sections of a European Union project to support Ukrainian digital transformation and harmonization with the EU Digital Single Market.

This month, the European Union launched the EU4DigitalUA project with a financial contribution of €25 million. The Estonian e-Governance Academy will lead the implementation of the electronic governance and cybersecurity tasks of the project, with a total budget of €9.6 million.

The e-Governance Academy and the Swedish International Cooperation Agency SIDA have signed a cooperation agreement to support the Ukrainian government in the introduction of e-governance. The agreement covers the development of policy documents, planning of e-governance activities, development of legislation, enhancement of e-capacity, promotion of involvement in the development of e-governance, and development of e-services for the population and businesses.

E-health is an information system that joins digital health record, pictures and registration. Both, doctors and patients should be able to make many necessary things through the system and it would save time and money.

The €2.2m EU-funded project, which has been developed by the Estonian e-Health Foundation, aims to provide patients with a cross-country e-registration system that lists all the doctors and health services in Estonia.

The EHR is built on Estonia's X-Road network, Mr Tiik told the presentation audience. X-Road is a secure gateway service architecture that hosts 3 000 eServices available to Estonian citizens. In January 2010, the eHealth Foundation launched a companion health insurance system for claims, reimbursement and prescription management.