Estonia’s Success in Building a Digital Society

Estonia's journey towards building a thriving digital city.

Recently, Estonia has been on the global map of recognition for its success in building a digital society. With a population of about 1 3 million, Estonia prides itself among the global giants in creating a digital society, ranging from its high technology infrastructure, commonly dubbed e-Estonia. This essay will discuss Estonia's journey toward digital success and what other countries can borrow from Estonia. Furthermore, it will discuss Florian Marcus' insights about digital works and the impacts of digitization on governments, grounded on his experience as the digital transformation adviser of the e-Estonia Briefing Center and his work at Proud Engineers. Lastly, the paper will discuss the challenges governments and large corporations face in the contemporary digital age and the benefits of using digital tools for effective governance.

Estonia's journey towards digitization began in the 1990s after its independence from the Soviet Union. The country was ambitious to invest in technology in all its sectors, including digital government services, to ease its citizens' access to government services (Toggle Desk, 2023). Currently, Estonia homes broad, innovative digitalized solutions, including e-voting, e-health, and e-residency, allowing the citizens to apply and complete government-related mandates such as paying taxes, business registrations, and personal services online. At the heart of Estonia's digital success is more than the investment in technology and innovation; the success is deeply rooted in solid public institutions, including engaging the Estonians on the benefits of the digital transition.

In addition to strong public institutions, Estonia's commitment to extensively embracing innovation significantly contributed to its success in creating a digital society. In the 1990s, Estonia established an established national internet connection, opening the path to numerous digital innovations. In its quest to promote innovation, Estonia built and supported institutions and programs that promote digital innovations and entrepreneurship (BBC, 2023). This innovation resulted in initiatives such as e-residency programs that enable global business enthusiasts to establish and run businesses in Estonia without their physical presence. The latter was helpful during the pandemic when Estonia closed its borders to protect its citizens from the virus.

Furthermore, the success of Estonia's digitization is owed to its government regulation that protects personal data. With about ninety-nine percent of all services done online, personal data is accessible online, which can be the target of cyberattacks. On its end, the Estonian government has laid down policies and enacted laws to achieve cybersecurity. Besides, in 2007, the country was a victim of a mega cyber-attack that allegedly was politically instigated and coordinated (Nordx Legal, 2021). For example, it established the Data Embassy, the Personal Data Protection Act, the Electronic Communication Act, and the Cyber Security Act, which are examples of regulatory laws protecting personal data from landing on third parties and cyber attackers.

Estonia serves as a model for other countries to emulate. Other countries should learn from Estonia to build reputable public institutions to encourage trust between the public and the private sector. With more vital institutions, innovators and digital investors from public and private spheres will collaborate to build a digital society within their countries. Additionally, other countries should elect leaders ready for change and embrace digital concepts in their administration. With digital-minded leaders, as observed in Estonia, other countries will achieve extensive e-services, including e-classroom, e-healthcare, and e-business, mainly crippled during the pandemic, hence running critical services even amidst face-to-face interactions as during the Covid-19 peak period.

Most importantly, in the face of the fourth industrial revolution, countries should start borrowing from Estonia's principle of a human-centered approach in all aspects of technology. This suggestion will actualize ease of access and operation of digital services for all citizens. Therefore, when developing technologies, governments should invest in reusable and automated ones that are user-friendly, and this move will promote convenient, safe, and reliable digital interactivity when accessing services. Like Estonia, other countries also need to invest in open-source building blocks. Estonia's open-source building blocks foster collaboration because they use shareable components that others can use. Estonia promotes cooperation and fast digital transformation worldwide, a strategy that other governments need to borrow. Lastly, global countries must emulate Estonia's culture of innovation and digital adaptation, which is worth borrowing from. Estonia teaches other countries the need to grow constantly and become resilient in building a digital society. The process must be collaborative and include both the private and public sectors. Such cooperation will help a country to thrive and adapt to the fast-changing environment.

Florian Marcus discusses how important digitalization and digital network creation are in modern-day settings. He asserts the significance of creating e-government services because citizens will always be government customers. When all services are digitized, it becomes easier for the government and the citizens to interact and access services. Having worked for three years as a Digital Transformation Adviser at the e-Estonia Briefing Centre, Marcus discusses that governance becomes easy as every process is seamless. For example, in Estonia, Marcus asserts that in 2021, ninety-eight percent of income tax was filed online as the process took only three minutes (TedTalks, 2022). Hinting that Estonia was poor, their pragmatic decision to adopt digitization eliminated corruption in governance, and brokers who took advantage of citizens seeking services enabled Estonians to access any service at any location as long as they were connected to the Internet.

Marcus informs that digitalization is multifaceted, and experts worldwide can innovate digital tools to ease governance in their countries (TedTalks, 2022). Once countries can digitize all their services, it becomes easier to meet the needs of their population, fight corruption, which leads to massive funds embezzlement, and steer their journey towards becoming digitalized like Estonia. Likewise, working at Proud Engineers, Marcus affirms that working collaboratively is essential to achieving digital transformation. Moreover, to him, establishing a digital society is akin to achieving societal change (Proud Engineers, 2023). Therefore, resonating with Marcus's thoughts, once a country transits to complete digitalization, it improves its service delivery to the citizens and promptly meets their needs. Still, digitalization should be adequately used in governance to protect the citizens' data from physical and online cyber-attacks. This calls for responsible digital governance to protect the government's digital assets from criminals.

Still, in the contemporary digital climate, governments and large corporations face numerous challenges that hinder their growth in digitalization. The dominant challenges include cyber security threats and a lack of long-term digital strategy, tools, and resources to reach out and engage their citizens and customers. With the modern-day freedom to access and use digital tools, hackers and criminals easily counter government or corporate digital advances. For example, with the freedom to use social media platforms, a group may use them to spread false information and conspiracy theories against the government or large institutions, which may affect their digital success. Furthermore, others may create fake digital accounts that confuse citizens and customers, fetching their data and information or scamming them, hence cyber-attacks.

Similarly, the inability to create long-term digital tools and resources to reach out and engage citizens and customers poses a robust challenge to governments and giant corporations. While digitalization is the way today, most governments still need to establish stable digitized tools to ease e-government services. Unlike Estonia, some areas in other countries, especially developing ones, have limited access to the Internet and still depend on paper-based work. Likewise, for corporates, maintaining digital tools such as software and introducing and maintaining more personalized technologies remains costly, derailing their progress to complete digitalization.

Conclusively, it is paramount for governments and corporations to ensure they invest in digital security and reliability. Once they want to transform their services to complete digitalization, they must invest in securing their clients' data and ensuring their privacy is top-notch. Furthermore, in collaboration, the government and large corporations can create long-term availability and reliability by partnering to establish stable internet connections across the country to ensure their services are seamless in any location. While large corporations should begin investing in more sophisticated and personalized technology to increase productivity, governments should harmonize all their services and ease the process for their citizens. Most importantly, using digital tools responsibly for effective governance must be part of the government's schedule. The government must ensure that data security and privacy are maximally achieved. The latter is possible by investing in reliable technology for developing its digital sites, maintaining them through reliable government and external experts, and enacting laws that will protect government digital assets and all data from external and internal attacks, as done by the Estonian government.