![\"JY](\"https:\/\/localhost:8080\/app\/uploads\/2018\/05\/JY-esotnia-1024x683.jpg\")
Why Estonia though?<\/p>\n
As a small country with just 1.3 million citizens, one might think Canada could find other countries with more cutting-edge tech to work with, especially when it comes to the pure size of government. But the country has been referred to as the \u201cthe most advanced digital society in the world\u201d by Wired, and a collection of Estonia\u2019s advancements in the space can be found at the E-Estonia<\/a> (a play off of E-stonia) site.<\/p>\n Estonia boasts digital government solutions in a number of areas, including identity, education, healthcare and business. Some of the country\u2019s most comprehensive digital offerings showcase e-identity, as more digital signatures have been used in Estonia than the rest of the EU combined. 98 per cent of Estonians have a digital identity they can use to digitally sign documents or verify themselves with.<\/p>\n Canada can learn from just this base of knowledge, as digital identity is becoming incredibly valuable<\/a>. Various levels of government have toyed with the idea, but nothing has fully scaled. Ontario\u2019s Small Business Innovation Challenge gave Bluink a grant to develop a digital identity<\/a> on smartphones, while the federal government is experimenting with blockchain to develop a Known Traveller Identity Program<\/a> to better serve citizens entering and exiting the country. Not to mention the various ways a secure e-identity could help citizens protect themselves and even access \u201cthe right to be forgotten.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n And that\u2019s just one feature of digital government Estonia excels at that can help Canada scale their own solutions.<\/p>\n Estonia\u2019s X-Road is the backbone of e-Estonia, as it serves to help public and private sectors link and share information. Data only needs to be requested form a citizen once, then it can be shared to make their lives easier. This is done by providing the information that citizens typically have to repeatedly fill out on a form or tell a clerk. X-Road saves over 800 years of working time for Estonia annually\u2014if that system is extrapolated for Canada\u2019s population, that\u2019s over 21,500 years of time saved annually.<\/p>\n Blockchain is also used to secure healthcare information in Estonia. This includes health records and prescription details. Medtech in Canada<\/a> is impressive as is<\/a>, but learning from Estonian practitioners would help set Canada up to combine innovative advancements in the field with cutting-edge recordkeeping.<\/p>\n The idea of conducting all government-related tasks in a digital setting is an idea that Canada has embraced a bit and is currently working to expand. The GCDigital team led by Canada\u2019s chief information officer Alex Benay is exploring new ways<\/a> to bring services to Canadians where they live most: online. Estonia already offers a government cloud, internet voting, a digital portal of government services and more. These are a few of Estonia’s digital services\u2014the rest can be found on the e-Estonia site<\/a>.<\/p>\n Instituting all of these digital services is a lot to undertake, and Canada\u2019s government recognizes this\u2014that\u2019s why this agreement with Estonia is simply a memorandum of understanding. It is meant to organize joint events, public official exchanges, knowledge sharing, digital consulting and more.<\/p>\n \u201cWith this memorandum of understanding, our two governments further commit to working together to grow our digital economies and deliver improved government services to those we serve,\u201d said Scott Brison, president of the Treasury Board of Canada.<\/p>\n This is the right kind of move for Canada to make though\u2014sharing digital expertise can only mean good things for both nations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are at an age where there\u2019s an opportunity to change the dynamics and relationship between government and citizens because of digital advances,\u201d Alex Benay told Techvibes last month<\/a> in a discussion about bringing more government services online.<\/p>\n \u201cWe also have to be very careful to not forge ahead in a disruptive way. We\u2019re not the expert in these fields. We\u2019re actively funding people to know more than us, so we should learn from these people and companies.\u201d<\/p>\n Though Benay is referring to some of the tech companies the Canadian government funds, the ideology of working with experts to learn what works best remains the same.<\/p>\n As Canada learns more about what a well-functioning digital government looks like, Estonia also has a clear goal as to what they want out of the partnership: AI leadership. The growing technology field is deliberately mentioned<\/a> in the text of the memorandum (while other growing tech sectors like blockchain, quantum computing and others are not), and it makes sense considering Canada\u2019s expertise in the sector<\/a>. As the two countries continue to explore tech in meaningful ways, this new partnership could flourish into something that creates meaningful change in how Canada grows as a digital entity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Canada has entered into an unlikely digital agreement with Estonia\u2014but it\u2019s only unlikely because many people don\u2019t understand the important history of Estonia\u2019s digital advancements. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with the Prime Minister of Estonia, J\u00fcri Ratas, yesterday to enter into a memorandum of understanding designed to strengthen cooperation between the two countries when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76244,"featured_media":105539,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[154,627,394,134,3088,186],"magazine-region":[],"magazine-series":[],"magazine-topic":[],"class_list":["post-105532","magazine","type-magazine","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-News","tag-ai","tag-blockchain","tag-canada","tag-digital","tag-esotnia","tag-government"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine\/105532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/magazine"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/76244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine\/105532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/105539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105532"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-region?post=105532"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-series?post=105532"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-topic?post=105532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"IoT\"](\"https:\/\/localhost:8080\/app\/uploads\/2018\/05\/IoT-1024x553.jpg\")
<\/p>\n