Ah … Estonia already does that!

Go on … admit it, your government services are “Fake Digital” … there isn’t really properly citizen/company IDs that can be trusted, there isn’t electronic tendering for contracts, there isn’t really ways to properly engage with citizens in a digital form, and your digital health record is stored away on a GP’s file system.

We have been pushing and probing and trying to address major issues, and we continually ask questions:

• Why can’t I vote/cast an opinion in an electronic way on civic issues (or in an election)?
• Why do babies still have a paper-based health record (Red Book) and I still take a piece of paper to the registry office to register a birth?
• Why can’t we have an open and transparent trust infrastructure for government contracts and procurement, and which is free of paper work and wet signatures, and which implements smart contracts that are fit-for-purpose in the 21st Century?
• Where can I debate serious issues and make my concerns to councils/governments/health boards/etc, that doesn’t involve me going to committee meetings on wet Wednesday evenings in a damp and smelly community hall, and then wait for months on the minutes of the meetings?

And the answer is often …

“Well … I dunno … but they do it in Estonia”