A pioneer in the digitization of government and public institutions, Estonia is now preparing its society for the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. While visiting Paris in November, Estonia's minister of education and research, Kristina Kallas, told Le Monde about the strategy the Baltic country has been deploying in this area for the past 40 years.
It started in 1990, after we regained our independence. We were basically facing the reality of we have to rebuild our country, rebuild our economy, rebuild a new political system and rebuild the governance structures. And I think like in every way in public sector, innovation happens when you take away money. That's when there came the understanding to let's use the most modern technologies to build our governance structures because that saves us a lot of money.
We have calculated that at least 2% of state GDP is saved, which means that you have less government spending of the GDP due to the collective use of digital technologies. You have less bureaucracy, fewer procedures and fewer resources spent on not very productive work. Of course, it also meant that you have to have a very open-minded culture toward technology. This was the hardest part of the process.
We did have quite heavy debates in society about whether this is safe and whether this is reasonable because the digital signature system requires that not only the government be digital, but the people need to have a digital identity. Eventually, I think the consensus was reached quite fast. People do trust that it's safe because it's protected, privacy is protected and it's cyber attack protected. We have been able to develop constantly further services. We have been able to do voting electronically [since 2005].
It means that 99% of services that you need to communicate with the state in order to receive, you do it digitally through your digital identity. I do all my services online. I am 50 years old, almost. I have never filed taxes on paper ever in my life because the year 2000, when the electronic tax reporting system came, was also my entry into the labor market. It's pre-filled with the data. You need to just check it. It takes me usually 3 to 5 minutes.
In the next phase that we're doing now with public services, we want to use personalized public services so that like with the tax declaration, if I log in, then for my purposes and for my information, it is already pre-filled. [For example], every time I go to ask for my mother's care services, I don't have to constantly fill it in. [I don't] have to go and start looking at what the state can offer me, but the state tells me. For example, you have a mother who needs 24-hour care, and we know that because that's what you have reported to us. So basically [I just have to go] on the phone and say, "Yes, I need this service."
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