I just posted the following story on my blog... -andy
This morning, Ivar Tallo of the Estonian E-Governance Academy gave a case study about his country's e-government successes. The E-Governance Academy was created three years ago to promote Estonia's e-government successes around the world, particularly in the former Soviet Union.
"We are a very small country," Tallo said. "Our population is 1.4 million people. But we have our own language, our own culture, and we have to sustain it."
When the Soviet Union collapsed 15 years ago, Estonia faced an incredible opportunity: to build a government from scratch. "A big part of the story from 1991 to 2004 was building e-government and an information society."
Today, around 52% of the population has Internet access and 91% have mobile phones even though the country's GDP is generally much lower than western European countries. All schools are connected to the Internet, and there are more than 700 public access points around the country. There's also an enormous proliferation of free wi-fi, including access at all Estonian gas stations. (As an aside, he said to the audience, "Look guys, the UAE can learn a good lesson about providing free wi-fi rather than charging 20 euros a day at a hotel like we have to pay here. Free wi-fi is good business.") Additionally, e-banking rates are also among the highest in the world. "I don't even remember the last time I went to a bank; we all do it over the Internet."
Tallo said that many people assume Estonia's success is simply because of the location and population size; however, he pointed out that Estonia's neighbors, Latvia and Lithuania, have almost half the Internet penetration rate as Estonia's. Estonia invests significantly in ICT development - approximately one percent of the national budget each year for the last decade. "We’ve formed a general consensus among the political forces in Estonia that ICT investments are necessary. In 1991, we looked around and said, 'Okay, we now have an independent country but we still don't live like Finns do.' So we had to make priorities, including ICT development."
"We never had a national strategy; when we started in 1991, we didn't know where to go. So we created principles of information policy that were passed by the parliament." This led to project-based development guided by these principles. They also had little baggage from previous practices: as a new country, they could develop e-government with a clean slate. "One of the main things isn't introducing ICT but changing procedures and rules, and we were quite fortunate to do so because there wasn't much resistance."
Tallo noted the importance of Project Tiger Leap, an initiative started in 1996 to connect all Estonian computers to the Internet. They completed the task in 1999, one of the first countries in the world to do so. Estonia also managed to connect all local governments by 2001, and all libraries by 2002. Meanwhile, a private sector initiative called [EMAIL PROTECTED] has worked to promote the information society to the general public. The program taught basic Internet use to 100,000 Estonians - 10% of the population - over the course of two years. "Of course the companies weren't just there for good will - they benefited a lot," he said. "The public started using e-banking and other services, saving companies a lot of money."
"Five years ago, Estonia introduced what was called the e-cabinet," he said. "It wasn't really difficult to put flat-screen computers in the ministers' meeting room; it was a bit harder to get the ministers to use them." But the program has made decision-making at the ministerial level much more transparent. "Our ministers now tend to participate in cabinet meetings even when they're not physically there.... Other countries at the time said we couldn't do it, but we were a new country, so we didn't know, so we just went ahead and did it."
"The cabinet meetings start at 10am; the first decisions are published online by 10:15," he continued. "So it's a rather convenient tool for the public, not just for the government."
"Introducing ICT is also having an impact on corruption... There is now much less corruption, and the most successful of Central and Eastern European countries in terms of transparency."
Meanwhile, Estonia will be the first country to offer nation-wide offsite e-voting, later this year. "Anyone with a national ID smart card and a card reader will be able to vote wherever they may have Internet access," Tallo said. They've also launched a website, http://tom.riik.ee, called I Decide Today. The site allows the public to file official requests for new policies or legislation. If their recommendation gets rejected, the government is required to give a formal explanation why they made that decision. For example, Estonia never had daylight savings time, because it is so far north. But the public proposed it for a variety of reasons and it was adopted.
-- ----------------------------------- Andy Carvin Program Director EDC Center for Media & Community acarvin @ edc . org http://www.digitaldivide.net http://www.tsunami-info.org Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com ----------------------------------- _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
