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How Estonia became a leader in technology

economist.com

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Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#41

Post by vetinari »

M8 wrote: post #17
kuratkull wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the percentage of foreign programmers is high in international companies. Local or small IT companies mostly hire Estonians - for no specific reason imho, maybe just to keep the atmosphere native.

That is racism.

It's not racism. On the contrary, what you have shown, is ignorance of the facts on the ground.

They work with what they have available. Knowing Eastern European companies well, they are tight on funds, so they cannot spend anything for international headhunting. Also, locals are cheaper - if they want to earn more, they will move to the West. The smaller companies are happy, that they are surviving at all.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#42

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

first time Estonia was on my radar was in 1998 on a Linux Conference in Singapore. The number of companies present from a small country like Estonia was astonishing. They have come a long way since and really know how to foster entrepreneurship and the local tech community. A lot of governments (sigh France) could learn from their hands-off approach.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#43

Post by devdoomari »

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…

what about verifiable mix-net voting? wouldn't mix-net voting prevent from such things in the first place? if not, why/how? (*I'm learning about these stuff, and I want to know your opinions on them...)

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#44

Post by mb_72 »

kuratkull wrote: post #7
Galanwe wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is stupid, and wrong. I worked several years in Estonia (at Skype) and I would say that more than 50% of programmers are from foreign countries. Mainly russia, but also Ukraine, latvia, Czech republic... In Tallin, half the population is Russian, or native russian speaker.

I'm an Estonian and would like to comment this with the results from the census: Tallinn has 55% Estonians, 36% Russians(who mostly live in specific sleeping/cheap/"slum" districts), and others.

I'm glad you raised this to counter the mis-information posted by the parent. I also worked for several years in Tallinn (I'm half-Estonian, half-Australian), and the information provided by the parent ss simply not true. This reinforces my belief many ex-pats live in a bit of a bubble, especially if they don't learn the local language or try and integrate more.

Back OT - I can keep my Estonian business ticking over from Australia entirely via the internet. I have a local (Estonian) accountant, but using my Estonian ID card I can digitally sign documents that need 'sending' or I can open such documents sent to me from government departments. Such possibilities really much life much easier as regards documentation, tax returns etc.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#45

Post by OlleTO »

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 with you but also believe e-voting undermines the integrity of the democratic system as a whole, black-box or not.

How it currently works where I live is that, at the start of election day, all the volunteers and officials who are working for the day are allowed to inspect the urn, check for hidden compartments, and so on to ensure it's empty (And anyone can sign up to volunteer). Then they receive and place the votes in the urn together, and it remains sealed until the counting commences.

This creates a transparency that is simply not possible with an electronic solution. Even if it was possible to go through all software and hardware being deployed (A project which by itself would take years and cost millions), and the problem of being able to cast anonymous votes without the possibility of anyone finding out what you voted for was solved, you still hand over the democratic control of the election process to a small technological elite who will be doing these checks, while you gain very little from actually doing so.

Denmark tried to put an e-voting system in place a few years back but failed because one of the parties that was intially in favor where swayed by an angry group consisting in large part made up of computer science professionals and students.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#46

Post by tsiki »

inglor wrote: post #13
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?

Finland was really hurt when Nokia fell - startups at scale and as a national priority are relatively new there. They're spending a lot of money and they have an excellent education system compared to a lot of other places but this sort of mental shift takes time. Finland has a cultural problem: working for a big company is considered good, working for a small one is considered being unsuccessful and failure at found…

>Finland has a cultural problem: working for a big company is considered good, working for a small one is considered being unsuccessful and failure at founding a startup is considered a shame.

Maybe 10-15 years ago. Now with the rise of successful startups and the national interest towards them, working at a startup is considered good and trendy and rather, most of the CS students avoid large companies. Even my mom was proud and supportive when I cofounded a startup, and she's always been the one to advocate for a good and stable job.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#47

Post by thekodols »

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…

While things described in the second paragraph are true, calling Baltic States as being at the forefront of IT tech is a bit of a stretch.

Except for Estonia (Estonia actually doesn't like to be associated that much with Baltics, their mentality is more in line with their northern neighbors.), governments here don't really know how to approach IT. They're just as much out of touch with modern technologies as US gov. It's quite chaotic and unregulated. Plus, silly amounts of corruption.

And the regulations that they do impose end up hurting the countries instead of helping them.

Plus, we are tiny countries (population-wise) that have 2nd world living standards. Not many people can afford to start startups.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#48

Post by pgeorgi »

devdoomari wrote: post #43
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…

what about verifiable mix-net voting? wouldn't mix-net voting prevent from such things in the first place? if not, why/how? (*I'm learning about these stuff, and I want to know your opinions on them...)

One feature of traditional voting is that everybody interested can be a volunteer and inspect _all_ aspects of the procedure. There are few requirements (some basic reading, some math which is mostly addition and division up to 10 digits in the worst case).

Once you start adding more complicated math to it, you lose this very desirable property. Once you add tech, you have a black box (what does the silicon in this computer _really_ do?)

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#49

Post by makeitsuckless »

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…

It's not a "little critique", we're basically talking about abandoning the fundamental principles of a functioning democracy here.

If such an election was monitored by international observers, the way we often do with third world countries, the report could be summarised as "probably completely fraudulent, because we weren't allowed to verify anything".

E-voting is election fraud. Period.

Elections should be transparent and verifiable, and every voter should to cast their vote protected from outside interference (i.e., alone and unobserved in a voting booth). These things are not optional.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#50

Post by xioxox »

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…

e-voting (and postal voting) is also terrible because it allows easy coercion of the voter. You can't control the environment elsewhere. In a real polling station, at least nobody else gets to sit next to the voter to make sure they vote the right way.
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