More than anywhere else in the world, Estonia’s rulers let their fingers do their talking. Using Web-based software developed by Estonian IT companies, ministers do much of their pre-meeting governmental commenting and amending online–cutting conference times by a third. And because their aides aren’t lugging reams of documents, the e-cabinet saves a couple hundred thousand euros in paper costs each year.
Hail, E-stonia! The place is obsessively connected. Per capita Internet access exceeds that in Britain or Germany. Close to 90 percent of bank transactions are done online or on WAP-enabled mobile phones. Why? “We had to start from scratch,” explains Arvo Ott, head of Estonia’s Information Systems Department. After decades of communism, the Estonians were so far behind the modern world that the obvious way to catch up was to skip a technologic generation, going straight from the hard-wired network of the Soviet era into wireless.
Today, library books can be located and ordered over the country’s “citizen portal.” One of out every four Estonians has used the country’s e-services to find out about property-tax valuations, for instance. The government has just begun an experiment with a system of multipurpose, chip-embedded cards that might be used for everything from banking to personal identification–drivers’ licenses, passports, library cards. By 2003, Estonians will be able to vote online.
Perhaps all this helps explain why, out in the countryside where you’d expect to find those watch out for deer signs, there are curious-looking roadside @ signs in blue, black and white, the national colors. They direct Estonians and visitors to the nearest of 200 public Internet points, set up in libraries and municipal buildings around the country. Only 200? Well, this is a land of just 1.4 million people. In any event, you can get the same information by calling 1711 from your mobile phone.
