Dear Digital-5 Ministers, Dear Vice-President Ansip,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Usually I start my digital talks by proudly stating that I come from the most digital country in the world, called e-Estonia. Well, standing here today I have to say I come from one of the most advanced digital countries in the world. All of us in D5 are top of the world when it comes to digital government and economy.
That is what makes D5 so valuable from the Estonian point of view: to exchange, to collaborate, to learn from the very best of the world. Of course, we also happily trade our know-how on what has worked and what not in Estonia to advance service delivery, governance, society in Estonia with aid of ICT. We have been building a digital government for 15 years now in Estonia. This work never ends, however.
First, technology marches forward – opening up new opportunities that were not possible or not as useful before. For example, what we can do with analytics these days is way beyond what we thought feasible 10 years ago.
A cornerstone of our digital Estonia has been strong digital identity, built first on a smart card and then mobile-SIM. Now we are exploring biometrical and other ways to carry our identity in future years, as smart and SIM cards are becoming obsolete or less useful, at the very least.
Second, our own understanding of what is possible – and required – evolves over time. We learn from own experience and constantly should work repeatedly to make the services better. We learn from the feedback from users, we can measure and track how things work.
We learn from others around us, studying how they do things. Be them other governments or private companies, even better. Nobody can be the best at everything. Thus, lots of learning is possible if keep an open eye and mind.
Such evolvement is usually described by going gradually through maturity levels. Yet, digital development does not have to be evolutionary: leaps are possible, too.
Leaps have two preconditions at their very core. First, we should not be afraid to copy. If something works somewhere, let’s try to mimic it and improve on the solution, take it up ourselves. No need to reinvent the wheel, especially as time and money are always limited. Copying is much faster, although we have to customise solutions to our settings, of course.
The Estonian digital identity concept we borrowed from Finland, for example. Except that we made it work through the innovation of making the card compulsory for residents. Now we take the original idea even further with e-Residency, opening up our services to everyone in the world. So, in Estonia we hope to be able to copy a lot from D5 colleagues as well!
Second, leaps require determination and leadership – especially from political leaders. If we have learned anything about digital government in Estonia, it is that technology does not matter the most. The same digital tools are available everywhere around the world, even if differently priced.
What matters is how fast and bold you decide to use the tech, how decisively you transform how the government works – with help of tech. That’s where the benefits really come from, and also where the hardships usually are in: for political, administrative legacy or other reasons.
In D5, our governments clearly have had enough ambition to make the most of technology, experiment with new tools and ways of doing things. May we have more of such leadership and determination to keep going down the digital road! And – why not use our success and D5 network to also lead others in this direction?
We can do so if we keep challenging each other in D5 with new ideas, vision, new innovations – sharing them and also collaborating on them. Indeed, Estonia would like to see D5 really become a platform for joint initiatives in the next years. We could be jointly crafting the digital government of tomorrow, showing the way for rest of the world to follow.
Estonian vision for future of digital government is simple: we should aim for zero bureaucracy and invisible government, as the slogan goes.
The best service is the one you do not have to do anything for, but gets taken care for you – even before you realize you need it. For example, in Estonia the government knows when a child is born as hospital creates the population registry entry for the newborn. Why do the parents have to come to us with various applications, even if these are electronic?
We could proactively congratulate and thank the parents for the new citizen with a simple official e-mail and ask two things: what’s the name and what account you want the child’s allowance to be sent to? That’s all we need to provide the services. No need for hassle with applications (although they are online), no need for much analytics even – although big data will surely amplify such proactive service options.
When there is a need for some action on people’s behalf, these digital public services should be as good as the best digital services out there. For example, why should it be more difficult for me to book my next doctor’s visit than it is for me to book my next night’s stay on booking.com or Airbnb?
I quite understand that in this example, the hardship is not just in service and user interaction design. It is in aligning the incentives, getting all stakeholders in agencies and hospitals onboard. That is why I return to importance of political will and public sector leadership.
Building a digital government that works demands bold experimentation, drive to push touch decisions and incite systemic change. Let’s use D5 to inspire and support each other in this direction – for building digital governments that live up to full potential of what digital world offers.
Thank you!
