Dear GKD Colleagues, One country that has jumped into the midst of the e-revolution and opportunity to change local government has been my home country of Estonia. I believe we have made more progress faster in this area than any other country, even including Europe. And we started from a point that is closer to most developing countries than Europe or America are. We have a pretty low income level (US$330/month) but high Internet connectivity -- about 40%. For that reason, I think we are a model that other countries can see and take lessons from.
There are a lot of things being done at the national level, but since this discussion is focused on the local level, I will talk only about those things. The government, especially the leadership of Prime Minister Mart Laar, is making the difference. So if you ask about 'critical success factors' I would say the first one is strong leadership from the very top of the government. Not just words, but putting money behind the words so that the government really takes action. For example, the government is making sure that people at the local level can get on the Internet. All public schools have Internet connections. The government also put computers in about 100 local places around the country -- mostly in local libraries -- that people can use for free. The business sector has been important too. The banks took the lead on electronic ID cards and digital signatures and we can use those for applications for local government. Now more than 90% of payments within Estonia are done online. If the banks did not already have this in place, the other big steps could not happen. The banks helped people trust the Internet for paying bills and transferring their money so that makes them trust that they can use it for other things like local elections. A big experiment will happen next year when some Estonians will be able to vote online in local elections next year. They will use their electronic ID cards and digital signatures to place their votes. This e-voting will make people trust that the elections are fair and all the votes are counted accurately, which not even America can say about its local elections. So I would say that the number two 'critical success factor' is leadership from the private companies, especially the banks because they use a lot of IT anyway in their business so it is a short hop from that to broader use that helps local government. Even if not a lot of Estonians use the e-voting in local elections, I think the whole technology can be developed into a product we can sell to other countries. That would cover the costs of developing it, and more. Also, companies in richer parts of Europe will see Estonia as a good place to develop and test their IT products. If all this works for Estonia where people are not wealthy and we had no democracy until pretty recent, I think it can work in other countries even in Africa and Asia. They should come to Estonia and see how we do it. ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For past messages, see: http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html
