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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

#51

Post by mvanvoorden »

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 black box technology, they're entire government systems are open source.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/estonia-publishes...

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#52

Post by belZaah »

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…

Which part of it would you consider a black box? The protocols are open (you can write your own voting application), the source code is largely open, there are numerous reports on it, you are most welcome to become an observer (and many do) etc. An informed critique of the system would actually be very welcome, just stating "random guys with flash drives are bad" is not that helpful

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#53

Post by belZaah »

Galanwe wrote: post #4
shumo wrote: post #3

Estonia is clean from russians not like Latvia, that's why they are centuries far from other Baltic countries.

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.

Hey, Skyper, greetings from another one! Skype Tallinn Engineering, as you well know, grew from the small all-Estonian core team to a ~500 people org by the time I left. The team was very international and many good programmers were from elsewhere but never a majority.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#54

Post by belZaah »

jkot wrote: post #33

Estonia is basically one big city, no country side. It is easy to score high in broadband speed etc, if no rural areas are decreasing average speed.

Yup, one big city: http://blog.moment.ee/2015/06/pruunkaru-brown-bear-ursus-arc... http://www.zacekfoto.ee/?pid=3339

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#55

Post by belZaah »

makeitsuckless wrote: post #49
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 transpar…

How so? The electronic voting is modelled exactly based on mail-based voting that is widely used globally. You put your ballot into an envelope, add another one and off it goes. To a public mailbox. Transported, sorted and delivered along with open-back postcards. To be manually handled by volunteers in a way most voters even do not realise exists.

We put your e-ballot into two envelopes making sure cryptographically they require separate keys to open. Deliver it via a secured and openly described channel and provide a cryptographic receipt. We welcome tens and tens of voluntary observers all over the world to observe all the proceedings. And improve the processes and code with every iteration there is.

How is the electronic approach less secure than the physical one?

Also, what many do not realise, is the fallback. Should there be an inkling of doubt about whether your vote went where it was supposed to or was handled properly, you can go and vote physically on the voting day and have that vote prevail over the electronic one.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#57

Post by johnchristopher »

hantusk wrote: post #26
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 ?

I think hornbill is just stating his key takeaway from the article: Rethinking processes from the ground-up digitally is much better than translating legacy processes.

Ah, I see ! I agree with that outlook, I misinterpreted his phrasing.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#59

Post by mvanvoorden »

kybernetyk wrote: post #32
Kaali wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is probably because they haven't found a way yet to put a stamp on a digital form ;)

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#60

Post by ommunist »

ido wrote: post #6
shumo wrote: post #3

Estonia is clean from russians not like Latvia, that's why they are centuries far from other Baltic countries.

"Clean" how? Wikipedia says 1/4 of Estonians are Russian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia#Demographics

Please do not mix citizenship with ethnicity. There are lots of Estonian citizens of Russian origin.
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