National ID & State Services
The case made by Toomas Ilves, the ex-President of Estonia
I was in the audience in Columbia University during the George Ball lecture in February of 2020. The lecture was given by Toomas Ilves, ex-president of Estonia. Ilves was the president from 2006–16. Interestingly, given the current debate here in the US, he was a social democrat. No one will mistake him for Mao or Maduro. His credentials in International cyber-security is impeccable.
Even though Mr. Ilves was a student of Psychology, he learned to code and was very comfortable around the creation and use of software. This is a very important aspect of what digital transformation of a country needs. The leadership needs to be familiar with technology and the use and misuse of it. We will look at this phenomenon in this article.
Mr. Ilves is very familiar with US culture, having gone to high school in New Jersey. He also works as a distinguished professor at Columbia and Stanford, he is uniquely qualified to talk about the current national digital infrastructure of the United States due to his interaction with officials, academics and policy leaders at the highest levels in the US. US culture is rooted in the idea that a National ID would be bad, since it would give the government too much power over individuals. However this is in direct contrast with what a modern society needs; hence…
