The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a proliferation of digital bureaucracy, adding to the inconveniences of everyday life and travel.
Perhaps all of the new apps, QR codes and endless clicking have not fazed the Web wizards, but what of the millions of digital dinosaurs who do not worship gadgets? If even nimble young people stumbled down the rabbit hole of the British government’s online Passenger Locator Form and failed to find the right providers of COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction tests due to a badly designed app, what chance do other people have?
One answer is to go to Estonia, the Baltic’s “Digital Republic.” It has a tiny population (just more than 1.3 million people), high-tech achievements and more vaulting international ambitions. There, people can become a naturalized digital citizen, with instant access to all of the state’s services, without a geek’s expertise.
Illustration: Mountain People
“For everybody under the age of 35, digital comes naturally. For everybody else it goes against nature,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said in Tallinn last week.
Kallas, often compared with the unstuffy prime minister Birgitte Nyborg in the Danish TV drama Borgen, answers questions in English more fluently than British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the House of Commons. Whereas Johnson spouts witticisms by former British prime minister Winston Churchill, Kallas quotes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Although her family played a leading role in both of Estonia’s independence movements from Russia, in 1919 and 1991, Kallas has her eyes fixed firmly on the future. She is championing a national project to overcome the great digital divides that arise from generational differences — many in their 90s cannot operate a cellphone — and socioeconomic ones. Her goal is to narrow the gap between the analogue oldies and the digital youth.
Many of the older generation could do with Kallas’ help. They easily tire of filling out forms and make frequent mistakes on tiny keyboards.
Yet during the pandemic, technology has been the only way for millions of people to communicate with friends, family, colleagues and communities. The digital future looks closer than ever, but most people want their transactions with government, welfare services and business simplified, so that a forgotten password or errant keystroke does not feel like a looming disaster.
However, in the UK, there are more than 100 Web sites to log onto to access government services — whether it is the British National Health Service portal for medical concerns, or the British Government Gateway for tax and benefits. People’s days could be spent trying to dig up and sort through log-in details — it is password hell out there.
Compare this with Estonia, which has a one-stop digital shop for services. You can easily file your taxes online (“tax attorneys are out of a job here,” Kallas said, jokingly), get drug prescriptions, book hospital treatments, and fix residency details and identification digitally without a physical identification card. People can even vote online — a feat that other democracies have found foreboding.
What about something more complex, like renewing a passport? In Estonia, people do not even need to remember to apply. The authorities remind them six months before their passport expires, and they fill in the renewal form — and all they need to do is upload a new photograph. It is a great example of the “once only principle,” where private citizens and businesses only have to give information once.
Taken together, the measures save about 2 percent of the nation’s GDP in bureaucratic time-wasting — a percentage that handily matches Estonia’s commitment to NATO (the Russians are still the old-fashioned threat to this emerging digital utopia).
Private data in Estonia is secure, courtesy of blockchain technology. There is no central database, but systems are interoperable and all citizens have the right to see how their personal information has been recorded and used by the government.
People do not need to emigrate in person to enjoy the benefits. They can become e-citizens of the Digital Republic from wherever they are. Up to 54,000 foreigners have applied for a government digital identity under the e-residency scheme, which allows people to conduct business in the country and access all of the country’s simplified digital services.
That is handy for small British firms selling into Europe, as well as giant US corporations. The UK’s departure from the single market has gummed up exports at the borders with forms, delays and red tape. Many entrepreneurs have set up e-residency in Estonia to avoid the sort of foul-ups that have been making headline news in the UK, from shortages of chicken at Nandos to milkshakes at McDonald’s.
Estonia’s private sector, invigorated by the success of Skype, its first local tech unicorn, has lent its expertise to the state to help effect many of these changes. Now it is moving fast to make everyday life more convenient, too.
For example, one of the most trying ways to begin a holiday after a long flight is to join a snaking line at a kiosk for rental car services to pick up a vehicle. In Tallinn, people tap their ride-hailing Bolt app to locate a vehicle nearby, walk over to it, touch the Bolt app again to open the door and turn the key waiting in the ignition. In less than 10 minutes, they can drive off without breaking a sweat.
The great leaps in digital technology of the past two decades have made life richer and more varied, but it is high time to take the drudgery out of e-government and e-commerce.
Small Estonia punches above its digital weight. Yes, bigger countries have more complex systems and knottier challenges, but if the energy behind the Baltic state’s digital ambitions can even rub off on reluctant techies, it might be worth more governments paying attention to it.
Martin Ivens, a director on the Times Newspapers board, served as editor of the Sunday Times from 2013 to last year and was formerly its chief political commentator.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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