Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

karlsnotes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 230 posts

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#71

Post by germanier »

rcarr wrote: post #26
scottLobster wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black swan events affect non-digital information as well. How many paper records have been lost to fire, floods and simple decay over the millennia? At least with digital records there's the chance that they're backed up offsite somewhere

Personally I think the ideal system would include both. Maybe a digital system that is periodically (say once a year) transferred to tape and stored in a secure facility like the Svalbard Seed Vault.

After recognizing that risk, Estonia famously signed an international treaty with Luxemburg "in the spirit of the Vienna Convention" to host an offsite backup (and plans to extend such initiatives).

https://www.riigiteataja.ee/aktilisa/2280/3201/8002/Lux_Info...

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#72

Post by Arrath »

dottedmag wrote: post #16
Arrath wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewing online sure takes a lot of the burden out of the regular renewals. Of course, I'm now 33 and still using a picture of 21yo me on my license which gets me second glances from bar tenders, TSA, etc. But if it keeps me from having to go in to the DMV...

I think the point was not to renew online, but renew less often.

It was indeed, but in absence of 20-year licenses or the like, I'll happily take the reduced friction of easier online renewals.

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#73

Post by kristianheljas »

giantg2 wrote: post #47
InitialLastName wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I renewed my REAL ID earlier this year entirely online. It's possible that it would have been more complicated if I had changed my address or needed to change any other information.

Seems odd they don't want an up to date photo.

They do, you need to submit at-most 6 month old photo while renewing. Or go to the office to take one. Either way, you also still need to go get the document from the office as it is only handed over by person (but you can pre-book a time slot!). Passport is a bit more complicated, since it requires fingerprints as well.

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#74

Post by sdfhbdf »

The title is a litte misleading since

    > The Estonian government estimates that going digital has saved the state and its citizens, 820 years in time and resources
It didn’t save it it just estimates it and we’re not sure how they arrived at this number.

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#75

Post by dghughes »

I'm in Canada and all I can think of is how my Mom, uncles, other older relatives do not have a computer. They have no interest in anything on a computer and have never touched one. You could put one in front of them powered on, logged in, web browser open, and they'd have no clue how to operate it to enter info.

We had a hurricane here and Mom applied to the Red Cross for disaster relief. She got a PIN for her online banking which she doesn't have or ever will.

There are quite a few people without computers. It's maddening to see some or proposed government services only be offered exclusively on the Internet.

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#76

Post by 0x138d5 »

hiiele?

On a serious note, while the eID/digital gov system is great and all it does have some jankiness. The address search system everyone uses has been a PITA for a while and the tax system still keels over for a day or so when the possibility of submitting returns opens. Then we had the case of one dude scraping several hundred thousand ID card pictures [0].

Also the broadband part is so-so. Estonian internet is notoriously expensive and slow compared to our near peers [1].

[0] https://news.err.ee/1608291072/hacker-downloads-close-to-300...

[1] https://news.postimees.ee/7635673/estonia-s-home-internet-sp...

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#77

Post by kristianheljas »

chungy wrote: post #46

Online voting is a terrible idea rife with flaws, intentional and unintentional. In-person paper voting is the only reasonable system.

I'd argue that a paper is much more easily tamperable/replaceable than a digital signature. That, of course depends on how much you trust the ID chip card security and mathematics around the encryption..

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#78

Post by whimsicalism »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #70
ryukafalz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go the other way; we really should require retesting for driver's license renewals. New Jersey for example just enacted a "safe passing" law earlier this year in an attempt to make bicyclists and pedestrians safer. But existing drivers will never have to demonstrate that they know this because we never retest people after they get their license once.

It's usually an equity issue, or championed as such by equity groups. America is so car dependent that for folks at the margins failing a driving test is the equivalent of losing your job. That's why DL renewals almost rarely require any re-testing and never require demonstrating driving skills.

Hitting pedestrians also poses issues for folks at the margins, yet we don't seek to educate those people on how to avoid this potentially life destroying situation.

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#79

Post by jeffbee »

antihero wrote: post #43
jeffbee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently discovered that the U.S. Social Security Administration has business hours ... for their website. They operate a website that is closed at night and on weekends. One is hard-pressed to imagine the level of IT dysfunction necessary to reach this point.

Probably so that there's no backlog buildup over the weekend?

Backlog of? You can go to SSA.gov and look at your statements, but only if it's weekday business hours in the lower 48, otherwise you cannot.

Re: Estonia saved its citizens 820 years by moving public services online

#80

Post by icoder »

Reason077 wrote: post #11

I wonder how many years the US could save its citizens by modernizing and digitizing the IRS, DMV, etc. Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?

US democracy could change by having a central registry of everyone, ensuring everyone gets their voting pass automatically, skipping the faulty and bumpy process of voter registration amd inequality of identification-ability
Post reply on HN