The pop­u­la­tion size of T&T and Es­to­nia (1.3 mil­lion) is ap­prox­i­mate­ly the same, but the two coun­tries dif­fer when it comes to the ease of do­ing busi­ness—with T&T be­ing ranked 105th and Es­to­nia at 18th.

What is the dif­fer­ence? Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.

The T&T Gov­ern­ment has out­lined its in­ten­tion to take dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion se­ri­ous­ly in keep­ing with the Roadmap to T&T Post COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic Re­port.

It not­ed that the dead­ly coro­n­avirus “has forced the Gov­ern­ment, pri­vate sec­tor and CSOs to re­think how tech­nol­o­gy can be lever­aged to ef­fec­tive­ly nav­i­gate the cri­sis and ac­cel­er­ate the re­cov­ery process.”

It al­so high­light­ed this dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion would re­quire an ex­e­cu­tion team work­ing in part­ner­ship with the pri­vate sec­tor and civ­il so­ci­ety in sev­er­al key ar­eas—re­struc­tured busi­ness process­es, dig­i­tal ca­pa­bil­i­ties/train­ing, tech­nol­o­gy, flex­i­ble IT ar­chi­tec­ture, and in­no­va­tion/ex­per­i­men­ta­tion.

But how long would it take be­fore tan­gi­ble re­sults are seen? Es­to­nia’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion start­ed in 1994, where the coun­try ear­marked one per cent of its gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) to in­vest in In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (IT). If T&T were to adopt a pol­i­cy like this, it would mean US$238.1 mil­lion or ($1.6 bil­lion) for IT in­vest­ment.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Flo­ri­an Mar­cus, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ad­vis­er at the e-Es­to­nia Brief­ing Cen­tre said: “The first ser­vice came on­line in 1999, name­ly the tax de­c­la­ra­tion. This was a huge so­lu­tion af­fect­ing a big chunk of the pop­u­la­tion and, bit by bit, it be­came the norm. These days, 96 per cent of all in­come tax de­c­la­ra­tions are sub­mit­ted on­line in Es­to­nia, typ­i­cal­ly tak­ing around three min­utes.”

The e-Es­to­nia Brief­ing Cen­tre is an ex­ec­u­tive cen­tre and an in­no­va­tion hub in Tallinn, Es­to­nia, spe­cial­ly de­signed for ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the e-state of mind. It has an in­te­gral role in e-Es­to­nia brand and coun­try pro­mo­tion.

Mar­cus said that by 2002, peo­ple start­ed us­ing dig­i­tal sig­na­tures, which cur­rent­ly save around two per cent of GDP every sin­gle year. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he re­marked that in 2005, i-Vot­ing start­ed be­ing avail­able for po­lit­i­cal elec­tions (lo­cal, na­tion­al and even Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­men­tary.)

Ac­cord­ing to Mar­cus, last year, 46.7 per cent of all votes were cast on­line. He high­light­ed that on­line vot­ing is cheap­er for the gov­ern­ment, more con­ve­nient for the cit­i­zens, and more se­cure.

Mean­while, the roadmap re­port in­di­cat­ed that the im­pact of COVID-19 has re­vealed many of the in­ef­fi­cien­cies and poor ex­e­cu­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the coun­try’s so­cial ser­vices and, by ex­ten­sion, the pub­lic ser­vice. The re­port not­ed that the coro­n­avirus’ ef­fect has al­so shown the high re­liance on Gov­ern­ment in keep­ing the econ­o­my afloat even with these in­ef­fi­cien­cies.

It said: “The mod­erni­sa­tion of the pub­lic ser­vice around an ar­chi­tec­ture sup­port­ed by dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and e-iden­ti­ty is in­escapable and must be ad­dressed. Ap­pro­pri­ate fi­nan­cial re­sources and struc­tures need to be put in place im­me­di­ate­ly to fa­cil­i­tate the time­ly ex­e­cu­tion of this ob­jec­tive.”

When asked about dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion could be im­ple­ment­ed for cit­i­zens that are not tech­no­log­i­cal­ly savvy or cu­ri­ous, Mar­cus said: “Do it like Es­to­nia.” He note the process en­tailed first­ly of­fer­ing free IT ed­u­ca­tion, be it through pro­gram­ming class­es in pri­ma­ry school or Com­put­er cours­es for the adult pop­u­la­tion in vo­ca­tion­al schools.

Sec­ond­ly, he said: “Nev­er force peo­ple on­line—even in Es­to­nia you can still con­duct all of your busi­ness with the state com­plete­ly on pa­per.” Mar­cus con­tin­ued to note that most peo­ple just don’t want to en­dure process­es on pa­per be­cause of point three: “If you cre­ate so­lu­tions that are not mere dig­i­tal copies of of­fline process­es, but gen­uine­ly save time, mon­ey and nerves, peo­ple will want to use these on­line ser­vices.”

He em­pha­sised that Es­to­nia nev­er forced any­one to vote, de­clare their tax­es or sell their car on­line—peo­ple do it be­cause it’s eas­i­er.

The roadmap re­port ar­tic­u­lat­ed that work would now be ac­cel­er­at­ed to­wards cre­at­ing a ‘Dig­i­tal First Gov­ern­ment.’ It not­ed that the first fea­ture would be the cre­ation of an e-iden­ti­ty for each cit­i­zen and le­gal res­i­dent that will be manda­to­ry to ac­cess gov­ern­ment ser­vices, will be man­aged by the Gov­ern­ment in a state-run or ap­proved pri­vate da­ta cen­tre, will su­per­sede all ex­ist­ing iden­ti­fiers and aligns with the elec­tron­ic pro­cess­ing of all gov­ern­ment ser­vices and dig­i­tal com­merce ac­tiv­i­ties.

Mean­while, when Mar­cus was asked about how the trans­for­ma­tion to e-gov­ern­ment and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion can im­pact the coun­try’s GDP, he said it was hard to mea­sure.

“If you sub­mit your tax­es on­line in three min­utes it’s hard to know how long you would have tak­en on pa­per. If you sign a con­tract to add a new board mem­ber to your busi­ness, it is hard to es­ti­mate how ex­pen­sive it would have been to sign a phys­i­cal con­tract be­cause per­haps this board mem­ber ac­tu­al­ly lives on the oth­er side of the world,” he ex­plained.

Mar­cus said e-Es­to­nia es­ti­mates that the dig­i­tal sig­na­ture alone saves two per cent of the coun­tries GDP per year (US$614.6 mil­lion). He said that the coun­try’s X-Road da­ta ex­change plat­form which helps gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties (and pri­vate com­pa­nies, if they wish to join the net­work) save around 1,134 work­ing years each year be­cause of all the re­quests that are made by ma­chines rather than hu­mans.

Mar­cus not­ed that be­cause e-gov­ern­ment is the norm in Es­to­nia, peo­ple al­ready used dig­i­tal so­lu­tions years be­fore the cri­sis and thus, COVID-19 didn’t change much for them.

He said that pupils con­tin­ued to do their home­work on­line, doc­tors con­tin­ued to re­view dig­i­tal pa­tient records, and min­is­ters con­tin­ued to sug­gest and vote on top­ics on the agen­da through their mo­bile phones.

Ac­cord­ing to Mar­cus: “Of course, every coun­try has suf­fered from COVID-19 but in Es­to­nia, so­ci­ety has been a lot more re­silient thanks to its dig­i­tal so­lu­tions.”