Estonia's legacy as an innovator in digital governance began more than twenty years ago when it introduced mandatory state-issued digital identities (eID) in 2002. Citizens access their eIDs through physical identity cards, which are encrypted and embedded with files that, once plugged into a computer, provide secure access to several digital services. Since then, the country has transformed into a digital powerhouse. At the time of writing, 99% of Estonian residents have ID cards, according to e-Estonia.
Yet how did a country once occupied by the Soviet Union achieve this feat relatively early in the Internet Age?
Following the Soviet Union's collapse, Estonia was left to build new governmental infrastructures from the ground up. “The main incentive for this digitalization was that we actually couldn't afford to build the regular paper-based bureaucracy,” said former digital government adviser Marten Kaevats. This is not to say that technology was cheap—but with sparse funds and no pre-existing blueprint for a digitized society, Estonia could design a new system of governance on its own terms.
These developments coincided with the PC age in the early 2000s. Over the ensuing decades, Estonia focused on harnessing this new technology to propel itself into the future. By 2000, the country declared internet access a fundamental human right. Since then, personal computers have come to serve a vital function in everyday life in Estonia.
Though Estonia is praised for its achievements in becoming a digital powerhouse, some still approach the idea of a digital society with hesitation. Who is to say that eIDs, which essentially contain the sum of an individual's private life, can't be jeopardized in some capacity? Can the government access this information? And if so, to what degree?
The developers behind eID have ensured that safeguards are in place to prevent privacy breaches. Rather than storing data in one centralized network, the entire system is decentralized, which “denies hackers a single point of attack.” Moreover, the underlying principle of eID is that individuals retain autonomy over their data rather than the government. Citizens are empowered with the authority to decide who can access their data.
Privacy concerns aside, digital governments pose many advantages. Financially speaking, “countries that implement a digital ID scheme can boost their gross domestic product by 3 to 13 percent by 2030,” according to one study from McKinsey Global Institute. Moreover, the efficiency that using e-services offers saves each citizen time that they would typically spend on laborious administrative tasks. “We actually have much more time to do more meaningful stuff than just push papers around, which means that we can spend it with our family or do some creative work or do whatever people want to do,” said Kaevats.
Inspired by Estonia's success, Ukraine has looked to it for advice in the creation of its system of digital governance.
Earlier this year, the two countries agreed to collaborate on advancing digital governance. “In the last five years, Ukraine has built a powerful digital state, which follows Estonia's lead in many ways,” said the Undersecretary for Digital Transformation, Luukas Kristjan Ilves. The smooth function of e-governance in Estonia relies on the uninterrupted flow of decentralized information between private and public sectors. X-Road, “an inter-organizational secure data exchange platform that runs underneath and between Estonian digital edifice,” makes this possible. Ukraine has developed its version of the data exchange platform, known as Trembita, which “was developed by the Estonian company Cybernetica.”
Since then, Ukraine has successfully created a digital society that is comparable to (and even rivals) Estonia’s. Where one might outperform the other depends on an important distinction: Ukraine's system of digital governance—known as Diia—is mobile-based, while Estonia's is mostly browser-based.
Conceptualized in 2019 and launched in 2020, Diia is Similar to eID in that it acts as a centralized state portal, granting access to 14 essential digital documents, including “ID cards, foreign biometric passports, student cards, driver's licences, vehicle registration certificates, vehicle insurance policies, tax numbers, birth certificates, and IDP certificates,” as well as access to over 70 governmental services, according to the brand's website.
All that is required to access Diia is a smartphone. While it's true that Estonians can access their eIDs through some mobile apps—including Smart-ID and Mobile-ID, the latter of which requires a unique SIM card—Diia differs in that it was designed with the specific intention to combat corruption, which has remained an issue in Ukraine.
“Our task is to remove the role of a human agency in those services where corruption risks are the highest,” said Former Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Fedorov. “What we are trying to accomplish is that information that needs to be verified and checked in the registries is done automatically without human involvement.”
Another benefit that mobile-based governance offers its citizens is increased mobility, which has proven especially useful during the ongoing war. “The main task of a government is to understand the needs of the people, to frame them, and to find ways to resolve them,” said Fedorov. For many Ukranians, these needs involve safe evacuation and relocation. Various features have been added to Diia to reflect this, including the ability to report property damage, evacuation documents, and the location of enemy troops, as well as radio and TV functions to bolster communication in areas where mainstream broadcasting infrastructure has been compromised.
Since its inception, Diia has found success. The United Nations Development Program reported that, throughout 2022, “63% of Ukrainians used public electronic services, compared to 60% in 2021 and 53% in 2020.” In addition, “an absolute majority of respondents (79%) who used these state electronic services considered the experience rather or very positive.”
Yet how did Ukraine develop such a highly effective system of digital governance in a relatively short time frame?
One reason has to do with the state of modern technology. “When Estonia came up with our e-governance solutions in the 1990s, the focus was primarily on computers. Now technological progress has allowed Ukraine to rely much more on smartphones,” wrote Estonian social scientist Peeter Vihma.
Estonia is now interested in incorporating aspects of Diia into its digital governance framework. Continued cooperation and collaboration will bolster security and the development of advanced digital governance.
This article was written by Natalie Jenkins as part of the Local Journalism Initiative.
