https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Estonia
e-Estonia refers to a movement by the government of Estoniato facilitate citizen interactions with the state through the use of electronic solutions. E-services created under this initiative include i-Voting, e-Tax Board, e-Business, e-Banking, e-Ticket, e-School, University via internet, the e-Governance Academy, as well as the release of several mobile applications.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-digital-republic
"It's government is virtual, borderless, blockchained, and secure. Has this tiny post-Soviet nation found the way of the future?"E-Estonia is the most ambitious project in technological statecraft today, for it includes all members of the government, and alters citizens’ daily lives. The normal services that government is involved with—legislation, voting, education, justice, health care, banking, taxes, policing, and so on—have been digitally linked across one platform, wiring up the nation.Today, citizens can vote from their laptops and challenge parking tickets from home. They do so through the “once only” policy, which dictates that no single piece of information should be entered twice. Instead of having to “prepare” a loan application, applicants have their data—income, debt, savings—pulled from elsewhere in the system. There’s nothing to fill out in doctors’ waiting rooms, because physicians can access their patients’ medical histories. Estonia’s system is keyed to a chip-I.D. card that reduces typically onerous, integrative processes—such as doing taxes—to quick work. “If a couple in love would like to marry, they still have to visit the government location and express their will,” Andrus Kaarelson, a director at the Estonian Information Systems Authority, says. But, apart from transfers of physical property, such as buying a house, all bureaucratic processes can be done online.Estonia is a Baltic country of 1.3 million people and four million hectares, half of which is forest. Its government presents this digitization as a cost-saving efficiency and an equalizing force. Digitizing processes reportedly saves the state two per cent of its G.D.P. a year in salaries and expenses.
According to the following article, Estonia's virtual government is possible because it is a small, homogeneous country that is educated and technologically accomplished (Skype was invented there). The Estonians have taken pains to secure their state computer system because Estonia is a neighbor of Russia, which conducted the first known instance in history of cyberwarfare against Estonia in April 2007.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20171019-could-estonia-be-the-first-digital-country
In fact, it was the trauma and destruction of the 2007 Russian cyberware that compelled the Estonians to create e-Estonia.
https://www.bbc.com/news/39655415
Non-Estonians can apply for "e-Residency" and become virtual Estonians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Residency_of_Estonia
e-Residency of Estonia (also called virtual residency or E-residency) is a program launched by Estonia on 1 December 2014. The program allows non-Estonians access to Estonian services such as company formation, banking, payment processing, and taxation. The program gives the e-resident a smart card which they can use to sign documents. The program is aimed towards location-independent entrepreneurs such as software developers and writers. The first e-resident of Estonia was British journalist Edward Lucas; the first person to apply for and be granted e-residency through the standard process was Hamid Tahsildoost from the United States.
An article from yesterday that explains so much more about e-Estonia, especially the ID system:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/e-estonia-what-is-all-the-fuss-about/
Since the concept was introduced in 2002, 98 percent of Estonians own an ID card, which is the key to using all the digital services and getting the most out of them. In Estonia, when a person is born, they're assigned a personal ID code -- it's compulsory to have one.For further context, there is no data kept on the Estonian ID card. It's a PKI system, whereby users authenticate themselves with PIN one and seal the deal with PIN two. There's a public key and a private key on the microchip, but no data.
This is how citizens access all of the services.
"One of the principles in enabling this is the once-only principle -- any time you submit any type of data to the government, they shouldn't ask for this data again," Särav explained.
"The government knows my name, where I was born, which school I went to, so if I apply for university, get a job, give birth to a child, they don't need to ask the previous information about me again.
"We have distributed databases and have those databases talking to each other ... there's a machine-to-machine exchange, and I don't need to resubmit any data again."
Another principle is called digital by default, which means the introduction of any new service is to be done digitally.In Estonia, if an individual wants to register a new place of residence, authentication is performed using the digital ID, and the individual can update their information in less than two minutes.
A digital service to the Estonian government is a fully digital end-to-end service with no phone calls, office visits, or physical paperwork.
Another element Särav pointed to as helping with the success of the concept of a digital government is truth by design; individuals own their own data, companies own their own data, and the choice is left to them to determine who else gets their hands on it.
Logging in to Estonia.ee allows the individual to see who is accessing their data.
"Medical professionals can see my medical data, when a policeman stops me they can see my driver's licence data, also if I have insurance, also if this is my car in the first place, etc," she said. "Only if you have granted them access -- it's always consent-based."In Estonia, you can also open a business in 18 minutes -- it holds the world record for this -- with the information pre-filled as the government has a single view of the individual.
These services are not only open to Estonians, however. In December 2014, the country opened up its digital services to the world, meaning anyone can become an e-resident of Estonia. Since 2014, more than 40,000 people from 150 different countries have been granted Estonian e-residency. They have established over 6,000 companies in Estonia.
Could this Estonian ID card be adopted at the state level in the US?
That is, the Estonian government would be contracted out by state governments to set up a system for ID cards, and this would include the use of Estonia's blockchain servers (located in their embassies worldwide). The services that could later be associated with the ID cards could be added later at the discretion of state governments.
In the meantime, the process of getting a state ID in the US would be streamlined. One could take all of one's paperwork to a notary and have it validated, bypassing one of the bottlenecks in getting a state ID. Later, those with state IDs could easily get an e-ID.
