

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

With the recent events (I didn&#x27;t know about it until ~ 3 days), the e-Residency program of Estonia to become an e-Estonian seems awesome.
I&#x27;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?<p>Which is the most &quot;advanced&quot; country in your opinion in terms of e-government?
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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?

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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.

