Around thirty percent of Estonia’s population votes online. Administrative tasks such as birth, death and marriage registrations can also be done over the Internet.
Most of the territory has been covered by free Wi-fi since 2000.
Estonia implements digital solutions for all of its issues. When faced with the issue of declining birth rates, the government decided to offer the possibility to become an e-citizen.
Instead of opting for expensive lengthy constructions and infrastructures to help the population deal with snow and extremely low temperatures as well as to solve the time sensitive issue of the lack of governmental services in rural areas, Estonia opted for improving access through online government services.
98% of banking transactions are conducted over the Internet and 95% of income tax declarations are also submitted online. There is also more more mobile phone contracts than inhabitants: 139 per 100 capita.
The example of Estonia would be useful for larger countries who would like to pave the way towards digitalization. Although the population in Estonia is 1.3 million, an initiative starting with municipalities or smaller organisational divisions of countries would be a good way to start. The Netherlands for example, although quite more populous, is only so by a factor of approximately 15.
Implementing advanced digitalization within a country would also be useful for countries with little population stretched across large areas with little connections and governmental infrastructures. This would allow for a swift solution to the lack of connections to isolated areas.
The areas that would be enhanced by digitalization are numerous. In the case of Estonia, while we might think that it is limited to mundane tasks such as birth registration, the reality covers much more aspects of Estonians’ daily life. Healthcare (with digital prescriptions and online health records), E-school are among sectors which have been made better by digitalization.
Reynold, M. (2016) Welcome to E-stonia, the world’s most digitally advanced society [online]. Available from: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/digital-estonia (Accessed 23 October 2016).
Anon (n.d.) e-Estonia – estonia.eu [online]. Available from: http://estonia.eu/about-estonia/economy-a-it/e-estonia.html (Accessed 23 October 2016).
Hi there! I’d like to delve deeper into the online election system by suggesting that it is indeed progressive, but should also be considered vulnerable. I’ve always wondered why on earth we still have the typical paper ballot each time we need to cast a vote. Aren’t computers or online methods a lot more efficient? Yes, they are by a long stretch. Especially when you take into account that obstacles like the weather can affect the outcome of an election (Hillary for instance is hoping for great weather in November, which draws more people to the voting stations and increases the likelihood of a Dem win). There is however one extremely important point to consider. In the ‘old’ situation, when you cast your vote, it goes from your hand to the paper and straight to the (sealed) ballot box. This ensures that every vote in the box is handled by one person and one person only. If we assume the voting process to be fair and private, we can consider the sealed box at the end of the election day to be a truthful representation of public opinion. The alternative, which includes the use of some form of computerisation/automation, will unavoidably introduce a middleman. This is not necessarily bad, considering the enormous upsides. However, we are all aware of the fact that systems like these are not as secure as they can claim to be. Look at it like this: you tell the computer which party/person you want to vote for, and you have to rely on the computer to ‘deposit your vote in the ballot box’. If a security breach occurs, the entire system is at risk. Compare this to a localised paper-voting system. It takes too much effort to effectively influence any of the results. I am therefore of the opinion that the ‘old school’ way of voting is indeed extremely tedious, but the same tediousness prevents tampering with the results.