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Ask HN: Is Estonia the best example of an e-government?

2 points by RaitoBezarius ↗ HN
With the recent events (I didn't know about it until ~ 3 days), the e-Residency program of Estonia to become an e-Estonian seems awesome. I've known that Estonia was a country where IT is very used, but what do you think about his status right now? Versus others countries?

Which is the most "advanced" country in your opinion in terms of e-government?

3 comments

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hackuser
> Which is the most "advanced" country in your opinion in terms of e-government?

1) One consideration is scale: Estonia's population is around the size of a city, 1.3 million, about equivalent to SF and Oakland combined. It's land area is around 17,500 sq miles; a U.S. state of that size would be the 42nd largest, between West Virginia and Maryland.

That doesn't diminish the services for thier citizens; to the extent that they enhance government through tech, that's great. But if you are comparing countries, it's much different to organize and service 1.3 than 300 million. In fact, if I were running a small nation (something I know nothing about), I might use that relative nimbleness as a competitive advantage.

2) As a guess, Singapore?

3) Does e-government include the governmental service of spying on citizens?

RaitoBezarius
> 1) One consideration is scale: Estonia's population is around the size of a city, 1.3 million, about equivalent to SF and Oakland combined. It's land area is around 17,500 sq miles; a U.S. state of that size would be the 42nd largest, between West Virginia and Maryland. That doesn't diminish the services for thier citizens; to the extent that they enhance government through tech, that's great. But if you are comparing countries, it's much different to organize and service 1.3 than 300 million. In fact, if I were running a small nation (something I know nothing about), I might use that relative nimbleness as a competitive advantage.

But wouldn't applying tech for very big populated countries would be better? I mean: the more people are contributing to an "open source" project, the better it is

So in the end, I feel like that if big countries would be more "open" by going in the e-government sense, we would have a "Linux" government (I admit that I really don't know nothing about this, but I find this very interesting).

> 2) As a guess, Singapore? Could you give some key points to outline the difference between Singapore and Estonia?

> 3) Does e-government include the governmental service of spying on citizens? Well, there is room to improvement concerning this issue, right? There is a lot of effort towards privacy matters, and in the end, people will fight for it, so can we suppose that the "spy citizens" thing will be solved at any moment?

(By the way, I feel that I'm more spied in my country -France- than in an e-government country like Estonia, reminder that a spying law was passed and everything is okay in France...)

hackuser
I suppose big and small countries are like big and small businesses. The large ones have more resources but move much more slowly.

I don't see the spying being solved at any moment, or much effort towards it.