An e-resident of world’s first digital nation — Estonia

I am thrilled and honoured to be an e-resident of the world’s first digital nation — Estonia.

It is something I could not think of even in my wildest dreams before 2020. One key component in my last StartUp attempt was “Identity Management.” on which I spent hours getting it right. In my research on this front for best case studies, I found two amazing things; the “My Own Internet” network and the digital-first government of Estonia.

The more I learned about Estonia’s fascinating digital identity and how it facilitates e-residency infrastructure, the more I was keen to get one ID for myself. It is your health record number, driving license number, and anything in-between where you need to interact with the State services. People are empowered with a citizen portal App that provides complete visibility of their data and who is accessing it or requesting access for a subset of your data. For example — if you are asked for a driving license by police, the app will inform you about what data the police just accessed about you. Imagine this for Health records.

Like any digital transformation of business, a country’s transformation is about visionary leadership first, people’s trust in the leadership, and finally, the last part is the technology. With limited resources on hand after the independence, The leadership of Estonia was active on the tech front from day one after gaining freedom from the Soviets in the 90s as they realised that technology was the only front where they were equal with other countries at that time (beginners). Although leadership was backed by the people’s will to change things around, becoming the world’s first digital nation in 30 years of freedom has been subjected to much scrutiny and a series of improvements. Here are some references in case you are reading this and keen to know more :

The Political Leadership
Technology and Infrastructure
Issues and improvement. E-Residency 2.0 White Paper

I do not have any commercial plans or wild startup ideas to leverage this e-resident status immediately. I wanted it because I was fascinated by its story and infrastructure while researching identity management. I found it cool, and I tried to grab one for myself to explore the gadget and the online portal that comes with being an e-resident. This e-residency of Estonia is the unexpected outcome and summary of my learnings from a wild StartUp adventure I embarked on from 2019 to 2021.

Anyways, “Aspire & Inspire before you Expire!”