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By Kersti KaljulaidFebruary 19, 2019
President of Estonia
Why spend your life waiting in line for a piece of paper that proves you
are you? Governments must learn to provide public services as
efficiently as Amazon sells books: no physical presence, no cost of
application, no opening hours.
If you can easily buy books online, make bank transactions, and log in
to your social media account within seconds, then why can’t a public
service work equally well? If people can manage their finances online,
why not your social-services account? If you can receive prompts from
your mobile operator to see when a package is will arrive, shouldn’t you
be able to receive text prompts from your government to renew your
driver’s license?
With the basic digital framework in place, it was time to build upon the
online platform we had created: Now that our services were digital, our
citizens could be, too.
Virtual citizens
With much of the country online by the mid 2000s, the ICT and
banking sectors came to the government and suggested that everyone
would benefit from having secure digital identities. So we decided to
give them to everyone.
Though the press has only recently been reporting on national identity
programs, Estonians have had digital ID cards for nearly two decades.
We can use these chip-enabled cards as an identification document
while crossing borders in Europe, sign and timestamp documents,
apply for different public services, pay fines and taxes online, query the
registries, or simply send encrypted emails. It has therefore developed
into a fully recognized online passport for our citizens.
But the innovation also lies in the process of bringing business, people,
and government together. The government’s digital ID infrastructure is
also used by banks and other private companies with high security and
trust requirements, and all private companies are free to develop
services on top of the framework, too. Estonia is therefore a benchmark
example of “PPP”—public-private partnership. This guarantees that all
people benefit from digital services.
Digital is only as safe as we make it, but its potential is far greater
than analog.
Then in 2017, we had to fix a technical flaw that affected at least half of
our ID cards’ security arrangements. The risk was theoretical—no
hacks occurred—but we had to react quickly once we were aware of the
problem. While some could update their certificates online, others had
to visit physical police offices to receive new cards.
This path is inevitable, and people will soon demand the same virtual
convenience from their political leaders as they do for their free two-
day shipping.
This article is part of Quartz Ideas, our home for bold arguments and
big thinkers.