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

How Estonia became a leader in technology

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 77 posts

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#31

Post by Kymps »

trymas wrote: post #27

One little critique I have, is about Estonia's e-voting. That's a total black box technology. Basically what they did is said "ok, let's vote using internet, and we'll believe results are true". They do not know is someone hacked them, etc. Voting data from the servers was transferred using personal computer and flash drive of some random sysadmin. It's horrible. In my opinion, they do e-voting for the sake of doing…

I agree, the e-voting technology should be a lot more secure, but as long as they keep improving it, I don't see it as too big of a problem, but if they used the same technology in the states for example, I would be pretty worried. The influence Estonia has in the world is negligible compared the US, so if something was to go wrong, sure, it would be pretty bad, but compared to the same happening in a more influencial country, it would be pretty minor.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#32

Post by kybernetyk »

Kaali wrote: post #25
johnchristopher wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever. what's your point ? Ditching the process of having a government ?

It seems that usually when moving from paper to digital forms, the original form is just reimplemented to be filled out on a computer. Where rethinking the actual process might actually reduce the actual interaction that is required from a person, to an automated system which can induce information that would otherwise be filled manually. In Finland when filling your tax forms online, the form comes prefilled with nu…

>It seems that usually when moving from paper to digital forms, the original form is just reimplemented to be filled out on a computer.

In Germany as a business owner I'm required to file taxes electronically. But then in the last step I still have to print out some of forms and send them via snail mail to the German tax office.

And don't get me started about registering a new company. It takes weeks and you need to visit a notary. (Coincidentally last week I created a UK Ltd to hold some intellectual property. It took 20 minutes and I paid the fee via PayPal. And the next day everything was ready to go.)

There are really different school of thoughts when it comes to administration. And you can't just slap an electronic form ontop of an over-regulated dinosaur and automagically become a modern & agile institution.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#35

Post by agumonkey »

hornbill wrote: post #15

Estonia’s success is not so much about ditching legacy technology as it is about shedding “legacy thinking” This is the key. I think many people does not understand this or does not approve of this. By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever.

True but it's a first step. They don't master the technology, once they use it, what should and can be 'refactored' will probably be. Right now they're still thinking through their last medium.

Saw this for national websites (tax, jobs), first version was heavy Java front and backend, complex, slow, full of requirements. Recently it was simplified (a little, sometimes a lot).

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#36

Post by tn13 »

trymas wrote: post #27

One little critique I have, is about Estonia's e-voting. That's a total black box technology. Basically what they did is said "ok, let's vote using internet, and we'll believe results are true". They do not know is someone hacked them, etc. Voting data from the servers was transferred using personal computer and flash drive of some random sysadmin. It's horrible. In my opinion, they do e-voting for the sake of doing…

In many countries and places this strategy of "ok, let's vote using internet, and we'll believe results are true" would work well. USA, India are not one of those places.

All the mainstream media reports on such topics and especially technology should be taken with a boatload of salt.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#37

Post by cuu508 »

Kaali wrote: post #25
johnchristopher wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever. what's your point ? Ditching the process of having a government ?

It seems that usually when moving from paper to digital forms, the original form is just reimplemented to be filled out on a computer. Where rethinking the actual process might actually reduce the actual interaction that is required from a person, to an automated system which can induce information that would otherwise be filled manually. In Finland when filling your tax forms online, the form comes prefilled with nu…

Yes. In ideal world, for example, founding a run-of-the-mill company could be as simple as spinning up a DO box or creating Paypal account. Set up billing and contact details, check a few options, click and done.

In reality, even with e-signatures and what not it's far from that. You submit multiple documents to multiple government offices, processing takes days, and there is plenty of printing, mailing and scanning going on behind the scenes.

Problem is, governments have little incentive to improve UX, as they face no competition. You either put up with the bureaucracy and stupid big forms, or... well, there's no other option.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#38

Post by atmosx »

inglor wrote: post #12

Estonians are everywhere - that's why they're successful. Everywhere I was in an accelerator, reporters and people from Estonia came in order to learn how things are done - this is a long and deliberate process. Once an Estonian journalist even wrote about our company - was fun! http://majandus24.postimees.ee/2080692/iisraeli-poisid-leiut... Other countries in the area (namely Finland) also do this and fly around - w…

LOL, you got this all wrong. The government is pushing technology quite hard on Estonians (for a variety of justified reasons) THAT's why you see many Estonian teams floating around.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#39

Post by OlleTO »

drawkbox wrote: post #30
ido wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never lived/worked in either but it seems both Finland and Sweden have really successful and huge tech industries though?

I haven't been to either but they have an impact for sure in gaming. Finland is home to Supercell and Rovio, arguably the two biggest juggernauts in mobile gaming. This has spawned many studios there. Sweden is also big in gaming as the home of Notch and his little multibillion dollar game company called Mojang with Minecraft. And of course PewDiePie with the youtube game review new era, it also has spawned all sort…

If we're looking at the swedish game industry you also want to add Paradox Interactive and Dice to that list.

Our general technology industry is "restructuring", with pretty big layoffs at the large companies. The same week this spring Sony and Ericsson gave advance notice of upcoming layoffs to 1000 and 2000 people respectively.

While not a catastrophe in itself, and a several companies stepped in to offer jobs, it's worrying as a general indication of the state of our technological industry.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#40

Post by dear »

ivanhoe wrote: post #14

This link from the article comments is also worth reading to get a full picture, which seems to be not all that great: http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/17/meet-doteebubble-the-myster...

"In many cases, the companies that received government money were being run by people with no experience in the field. We wrote about an incubator for gaming startups, where none of the people running the incubator had ever worked in the gaming industry! Then there was the incubator that received nearly 700,000 euros from the government to set up in a small town of 20,000 people to promote creative arts startups, which as far as we can tell was just a few women making dresses and jewelry."
Post reply on HN