President Kersti Kaljulaid on Tuesday said that e-residency must take into consideration a wider societal benefit, adding that cooperation between the public and private sectors has a vital role to play in the e-residency project.
"We must clarify whether e-residents are a community of our friends, a platform of e-services for the entrepreneurs of the world or some third or fourth thing," Kaljulaid said in a press release. "We must also jointly reach an understanding regarding how both an entrepreneur in Võru and an accountant in Saaremaa could benefit from the programme."
Read more: EE: Kaljulaid on e-residency: Cooperation with private sector important
Estonian company Cybernetica is developing a data exchange layer for Greenland similar to the X-Road solution being used in Estonia. Greenland's system, however, will be called Pitu.
A Pitu conference dedicated to e-government solutions and the implementation of the X-Road data exchange layer was held in Greenland last week, sponsored by the Estonian Embassy in Copenhagen and the Greenlandic Agency for Digitisation.
Read more: Estonia's Cybernetica to develop data exchange system for Greenland
The key to developing a digital society lies not just in technical issues but in a government's political will to devise policy, build infrastructure, promote computer studies and educate its politicians, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, former president of Estonia, said in Taipei on Thursday.
Technology is something that is so cheap and so readily available these days that anyone or any country, no matter how rich or poor, can digitalize, Ilves said in a keynote speech at the Digital Innovation Forum.
Read more: Creating digital society requires political will: Estonia ex-president
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.
Read more: Estonia’s former PM says governments have a responsibility to provide digital services
Estonia is well-known in Europe for being a highly developed country in the tech space with approximately 30.6 startups per 100,000 inhabitants. The country is now poised to become a leading fintech hub.
Digital innovators like Skype and TransferWise, as well as initiatives such as e-Government and e-Residency, have earned Estonia such praise. Skype, the world’s largest peer-to-peer communications platform, was acquired by eBay for US$2.6 billion in 2005. Payment startup TransferWise, which has since relocated to London, raised US$396.4 million in funding and is now part of the unicorn club.
Read more: Government Pushes for Fintech Revolution in Estonia