Cloning E-government

At the end of last year, the United Nations Development Program, the Open Society Institute and the government of Estonia founded the Estonian E-governance Academy in Tallinn. Over the next three years, with the support of leading experts and financial contributions exceeding USD 600.000 the academy aims to provide training and transfer knowledge to post-communist states.

Estonian exceptionalism

The advancement of e-government and the diffusion of information technology usually correlate with the overall level of social, political and economic development. However, Estonia has proven to be the exception. Estonia’s per capita Gross National Product (GNP) is one-third of the European Union average, but with Internet penetration rates at 40 percent, it ranks among the most tech-savvy nations in Europe.

The level of achievement is particularly visible in the arena of e-government, where Estonia has launched many interactive and transactional services. At the same time, another tech-savvy nation, Slovenia (with a per capita GDP 2.5 times higher than that of Estonia), struggles with making simple transactions available for its citizens.

Hence, it is appropriate for the location of the academy to be in Tallinn and cooperation with the government of Estonia is natural. Furthermore, a shared history in the Soviet Union and many informal factors still embedded in Estonian Society (e.g. a knowledge of Russian, certain behavioral traits) should help the Estonian academy facilitate the transfer of knowledge to officials from other states in the former Soviet Union.

Such an approach can be considered ‘targeted foreign aid’ aimed at boosting knowledge of the Estonian experience and trying to foster the emergence of e-governments in other countries that have been left behind. Similarities can be seen with the Swedish government’s decision to support the opening of the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga in the early 1990s. 

E-everything

The academy’s strategy lays out much broader and deeper objectives than a simple transfer of Estonian experience. The academy aims “for the creation and transfer of knowledge concerning e-governance, which is understood to include e-democracy.”

A demonstration of the ability to “think big” would not be a minus were it not to raise questions about the implementation of such plans.

The cause for caution is not the result of a rare moment of scepticism; rather, it is well grounded in evidence and the current situation. The Estonian experience is limited to e-administration and e-government. E-governance, not to mention e-democracy, is a much broader category, in which the Estonian experience does not have much to offer.

Even more importantly, many target countries of the academy, such as the states of Central Asia, are not democracies. It is hard to imagine such states utilizing the broader approach to e-governance, particularly such fancy topics as e-democracy and e-rights, without them first making fundamental changes in their political system. These countries can certainly improve the administrative capabilities of public networks and implement certain services online without becoming democracies – in many ways, similar to Singapore, a state with an effective e-government but certainly not a democracy.

On bread and the Internet

At the same time, both political and economic openness have been crucial for the spread of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in Estonia.  The government’s supply of services and the growing public demand for such services have worked together. Such interaction, facilitated by the open nature of the Internet, has led to constant innovation and improvements in e-government services as a valued subject of public debate and on-going political demand.

Most fundamentally, the provision of e-services is not enough unless accompanied by increasingly sophisticated demands from the public. Hence, it is pointless to ask whether supply or demand for such e-government service is more important; they each interact simultaneously like the two blades of a scissors – both blades are essential for cutting.

If the demand from the public is limited due to political reasons (censorship) and/or economic factors (poverty, stagnation), e-government will be resigned to the role of a petty project of government officials and elites.  In other words, the “digital divide” cannot be solved before the “bread divide” is solved. Certainly, ICTs can be used to boost economic development but they should be introduced hand-in-hand with other fundamental institutional changes.

More than just “e”

On a positive note, the efforts of the e-governance academy should not be considered in isolation. Many other international organizations, such as the Soros Foundation and the United Nations Development Program, are already working in the broader areas of development and institutional change in post-communist states; specific ICT issues are also addressed by several organizations, such as the Global Internet Policy Initiative (GIPI).

The strategy of the academy foresees cooperation between these organizations and experts in both the East and the West dealing with e-governance issues in the countries struggling with the legacy of communism. Cooperation can up the pressure on governments to implement some serious policy changes and decrease the risk of building “Potemkin e-villages.”

Hence, it can be expected that, in the words of Ronald Reagan, a well-orchestrated effort would replace “the Goliath of totalitarianism with the David of the microchip,” and not just add an “e” to “government.”